The New Masters Academy Beginner Series helps aspiring artists start their artistic journey
on the right foot.
Your expert instructors will gently guide you to an understanding of drawing fundamentals.
In this lesson, Chris and Heather will show you how to apply the basics using tone, value,
and line drawing exercises.
You will then learn the laws of light, rendering techniques,
and how to construct basic forms in 3-D.

Hey, guys, welcome back.
I’m Chris Legaspi.
And I’m Heather Lenefsky.
In the last lesson, we covered all the fun stuff, all the cool toys artists love; materials,
furniture, pencils, pens, markers, easels, everything you need to get started.
In this lesson, we’re going to show you what to do with all those cool materials.
We’ve got you all hyped up.
And now, the payoff.
You’re going to get to make some marks.
Alright guys, now that you know about the materials and the accessories, let’s talk
about ways that you can use your materials.
We’re going to apply the basics here.
I wanted to start by talking about some exercises that you can do.
I’m going to begin with line drawing exercises.
Line, as we know, is our old friend.
It’ll be the first mark that you make.
It’s kind of like writing, too.
First mark we all make when we pick up pencils and pens.
I’m going to show you a couple of different exercises that you can do to improve your
drawing using line.
So, the first exercise is what I call the connect the dot.
Basically, you just want to put a couple of points on your paper.
One there, one there.
Make it a little darker so you can see it on camera.
Then, voooop, try to connect.
Little off.
Little off.
You don’t have to be perfect.
Now, that was way off.
Oh, my God.
Terrible.
Getting better.
The idea is to practice the motion.
It’s really the motion.
That’s one thing I want to stress, too.
It’s not wrist motion.
You notice I’m not doing….right?
I’m doing this.
You see my whole arm move.
If you see my body you can actually see I’m moving my body too,
especially if you want to get a long line.
So, what I would recommend is to do a whole page, maybe a page in your sketchbook or a
page on like a piece of copy paper and fill it with line.
Draw two dots and try to connect.
As you get more confident you want to get as far as possible.
Let me try a big one. Ready? Here we go.
Ooh, pretty close. Look at that. One more.
One more.
See, this is fun.
Oh, I got it.
Pretty close. That’s the idea.
What I want you guys to do is go in eight directions.
We went left to right.
This is direction one.
Obviously, top to bottom is another one.
Do a whole page of these top to bottom.
And then diagonals.
Go from as long as you want making sure to move your whole body.
You notice that when I move my whole body the line actually becomes a little bit more accurate.
Then to complete the eight directions go in reverse.
This is against what’s naturally comfortable for me, left to right.
You want to do that too.
You’ll want to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation as often as possible because that’ll
really ramp up what is known as dexterity, the ability to hold your tool and make marks
with your tool, dexterity.
So, you’ll want that.
This is kind of awkward for me, but when I go back the other way it’ll be really, really
helpful when I go back the other way.
So, eight different directions: left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top,
and diagonals going upper left to down, lower left this way, and then in reverse as well.
The next exercise is ellipses and ovals.
Basically, you want to practice drawing curves.
Round forms, curves of various sizes in various shapes and various degrees.
Draw some big ones.
And notice the bigger I get, the more my body is involved.
Again, moving the whole body.
And these, too, you want to go different directions.
Left to right, right to left, diagonals.
And up and down, top to bottom.
What I like about these little exercises is that you can do them almost anywhere, and
you can even draw them if you’re watching your favorite movie or TV show.
Or even when you’re on the phone and you’re on hold on the phone, it’s a great way to
make the most of your time.
Pretty, much when you’re waiting anywhere you can do these wonderful little exercises
to really ramp up your dexterity, your control, and your ability to draw with line.
Let me try and draw a big one.
It’s a lot of fun.
Okay, next thing we’re going to do is a little bit of shading.
I’m going to use a hatching technique.
Hatching is basically shading with line.
I’m going to start with these little squares.
What you want to do is fill the box.
You want a nice, even tone.
Nice even tone.
Do a whole sheet of these boxes,
whole page in your sketch book or a whole sheet of paper. This one is a little off.
What that does is it trains you to do really nice clean and even strokes.
I’m even going to do it with a pen just to show you the importance of line.
What I’m doing here is I’m consciously trying to make my strokes nice and even, nice
and clean so that when you step back the tone reads as a nice, even, uniform, flat tone.
Again, it’s not really about how good the tone looks or how perfect the lines are.
This is really just a mechanical exercise, really muscle memory here.
Of course, you don’t want to go in just your comfortable direction.
For me it was up and down comfortable.
You want to go in four different directions.
Right to left, really make yourself uncomfortable.
Bottom to top.
This one, you notice, is not as clean, so that’s an uncomfortable position for me.
The more I practice that the better my drawing skills will be overall.
Of course, you want to go in diagonals, too.
Nice and even.
Nice and clean.
As best as you can.
Then do the opposite way.
Do these in at least four different directions, filling up squares using hatching, using line
to make nice, even tones.
Okay, the next exercise is similar to the square.
We’re going to fill a rectangle or a bar.
What this does is it’ll help your endurance.
The advantage of making a long bar is that it’ll help with your endurance.
Unlike the small square, the long bar will force you to keep drawing and keep drawing,
and it’ll really improve your muscle memory.
Again, this is a comfortable position for me.
Left to right, bottom to top.
Let’s try the uncomfortable way, another direction.
Oh, my God. I'm straining. Oh, ouch.
It’s like doing push-ups. It’s like doing exercises.
You want to go in, not just horizontal, but vertical rectangles, too.
You want to try and stay as consistent at the bottom as when you get to the top.
That’s going to be tough.
But, that’s what this is for, for really working those muscles, getting that muscle memory.
Again, you can do this almost anywhere in your sketchbook or any sheet of paper.
It’s a great exercise you can take on the road.
Let me try right to left.
Let me try a diagonal and see how that goes.
So, do a whole page of these.
Change up your direction.
Make sure you do half your sheet horizontal and at least half your sheet vertical as well.
Okay, and the final line exercise.
This is going to be the tough one, but I’ve got faith in you guys.
And if you do this, believe me, your drawings will go to the next level.
What we’re going to do is do gradations.
What I’m going to do—instead of doing a bar, I want to do imagining a picture, imagining
like a canvas or a piece of paper.
This is like on my picture, my thumbnail, and I’m going to start doing a gradation
with line in a fairly comfortable direction left to right.
See that?
How it gradates from top to bottom, dark to light.
Let me try the inverse.
It’s another thumbnail.
This would be a cool way to practice doing gradations in skies and things or filling
in the background if you’re going to put a figure or a still life there.
I’m only using line to get a nice gradation.
Notice at the end I leave the white of the paper and reinforce it down here.
Let me try diagonal.
Again, starting with what’s comfortable for me.
Try to make it as smooth as possible using only line.
That one is kind of ugly.
I’ll admit it’s a little ugly.
Let me try this way.
It’s a little better. Nice and smooth.
Let me try it with a pen, too.
With pen I’m going to go in an uncomfortable direction,
which is bottom to top, right to left.
It’s the complete reverse of what’s comfortable for me.
Wish me luck. Here we go.
Ooh, so uncomfortable.
So uncomfortable.
That’s okay, that’s what we want.
This is not a hatching contest by any means.
This isn’t an abstract drawing contest.
This is a pure muscle and draftsmanship exercise.
Draftsmanship is drawing skill.
That was a tough one.
That was a tough one.
Let me try one more tough one just so you know that—oh, let’s try this one.
The inverse diagonal.
Oh, ouch. Ouch.
It’s like doing push-ups.
It’s like doing abdominal crunches.
Oh it hurts.
It hurts.
But you’ll thank yourself later.
Oh, whoo.
My arm is hurting.
Notice I said my arm.
My arm-let me draw a little arm for you- right here is sore, my little shoulder.
I’m drawing from the shoulder.
You notice you don’t see me chicken scratching with what I call these little tiny marks.
No, you want to do umph.
Again, that whole body will help you to make nice and clean marks.
Then we’ll practice your tones.
You’ll get great.
You can see how just these simple exercises alone, even a little bit every day, five or
ten minutes a day, one sheet day, your drawing
and your ability to use your tools will really improve.
So, just a quick review.
Start with line.
Connect the dot exercise, one to another.
Do your best to connect.
Go in at least four different directions.
Go the opposite direction of what’s comfortable to you to really push and strengthen your dexterity
The next series of ellipses and ovals.
Just hand draw ellipses and ovals in multiple directions as well and multiple sizes.
Making sure you use your whole arm, not just your fingers.
Next is filling boxes with only line so use only line to fill a box.
The goal is to make the tone as even as possible.
Make your lines as clean and as even as possible.
The next similar exercise is to do a long bar, a long rectangle to really help your
endurance, your muscle endurance.
Obviously, when you get to the end, you want the end, you’re going to be a little bit
tired, but this is going to really push your endurance.
You want the end to be just as clean and just as useful and just as pretty,
just as even as the beginning.
You want to do these up and down as well.
And finally, the last one.
Instead of trying to do an even tone do a gradation.
Go from dark to light.
I like these little thumbnail, mini picture frame style drawings to kind of help you think
in terms of composition as well while you’re doing your exercises.
You can try them in pen like I’m doing and pencil like I’m doing.
Whatever two you’re comfortable with. I would say try both.
Again, do them as often as you can, even as little as five minutes a day.
Do several pages of practice for the following exercises: Connect the dot exercises in all
eight directions.
Ellipse and oval line exercises in all eight directions.
Shading a square exercise with line in four directions.
Shading a rectangle exercise with line in four directions.
Shading a gradation bar with line in four directions.
There is no limit to how many times you can do these exercises.
Be sure to focus on your weak areas.

Alright, now we’ve covered some linear exercises using line,
and we’re going to move on to tone.
You guys, these are super important lessons, and they’ll really help you to draw better
and improve your overall skills.
So, let’s get started.
Let’s imagine we want to look at a five value range from light to dark.
And since we always want to practice kind of seeing things in the thumbnail if possible,
let’s go ahead and do it in a series of boxes rather than just a strip.
We’re going to do five little puddles here.
I’m just using a Conté.
I’m going to get some kind of boxy looking shapes.
Let’s put a fifth one in here.
The cool thing is, this one is going to be the white of the canvas or the paper.
That one is done. Check.
And so I think a good way to kind of approach it would be—you know, maybe we’ll look
first at the darkest dark and the lightest light.
I’m going to use the edge of the Conté because when we’re doing tone we’re flipping
it to that thick side.
You know, Chris really was working out there doing all those lines.
I feel like this is cheating.
I’m just trying to get a smooth tone.
I’m going to build up kind of slowly.
When you go slower you can be more conscientious of your pressure that you’re using.
That way you can keep it smooth versus if I get really dark really fast here, you know,
I might not be able to quite match it up without getting some kind of line in between.
If you can kind of smoothly that’s also a nice tool to be able to develop.
I used to just draw Tetris shapes on my pad to warm up kind of a fun variation on a theme.
We get this one pretty dark.
I’m starting to press into the grain of the paper.
Let’s see if that can be our darkest dark.
Let’s kind of estimate maybe what 50% is between the darkest dark
and the lightest light here.
Again, kind of uniform, trying to be clean so that it’s kind of uniform.
I’m going to come back across again.
I’m doing this the easy way for me, so gravity is being kind of useful on this table.
I’m just sort of letting it fall.
Alright, let’s see.
That might even be getting dark there.
One thing we might do is just lift a little bit out, kind of blend it in a little bit.
Let’s see if this kind of—just to kind of get it looking nice.
We’ve just got the tissue there.
And I still think that’s a little dark probably.
And so, with drawing and with art, you want to sneak up on something slowly so you don’t
overshoot your mark.
A lot of times it’s like a pendulum.
You go, well, shoot, I pushed that a little darker than maybe I ought to have, so let’s
see if I can make this a little darker to compensate.
That looks a little better.
We might have to come up a little lighter on that.
Maybe I’ll pick off a little bit.
But, for now let’s see if, you know, let’s look at the lightest light here and see what
this looks like.
And this paper is going to pick it up quick, so I’m going to try to be much more careful.
We look and we go does that look like 50%?
No, that’s more close to the light to the middle here.
Let’s take another pass at it.
That’s kind of how this goes.
You make a choice and you stop and you go is that right.
Kind of evaluate and go back in.
It’s really not magic.
It’s just a series of decisions.
When you get better at making decisions and your hand gets better at performing them,
your stuff starts to look better.
We’re getting warmer.
Let’s put this one in and see what we think.
Just kind of following that same stroke to lay the tone in.
Now, if I stop here, that’s not nearly enough.
I’m going to start leaning on it a little more.
Kind of rotate it in my hand to keep that tip looking nice instead of starting to get
a flat edge on it.
Alright, let’s give it the Kleenex treatment.
Let’s see what this does.
Let’s see if we’re getting any warmer.
Alright, what do you think?
So, this kinda still, this is really close to this, and this is really close to this.
We might want to see if we can just draw a little more distinction between these.
But, this is the idea, and so as you get a feel for your paper and you get a feel for
your instrument, you’re going to go back and forth, and you’re going to try to really
pay attention and study value.
You know, it seems like filing in a couple of boxes would be a piece of cake, but most
of these things they do require—I mean all of it, the more present you can be, the more
seriously you can kind of take it, it’s just good to start cultivating it now even
though we’re little coloring in boxes.
So, you kind of get the idea.
Once you start to play with the five values then we’re going to look at something similar,
but we’re going to limit the range of values to a high key or a low key.
Before we do that, though, I’m going to go ahead and just mark a little shapes in here.
Let’s work on just some gradients.
Maybe full dark to light here.
So, let’s do one of these maybe here from side to side, kind of follow that last.
I’m just using sort of a generic shape here because if we’re really going to be doing
thumbnails down the road, as far as making pictures go,
that rectangle can kind of come in handy.
Now within just one shape, same idea, we’re just going to see if we can slowly build tone.
I’ve got my knuckles here resting down.
Again, if you can see this wrist is pretty locked out.
My shoulders aren’t as strong as Chris’, but I’m working on it.
It really is, it’s something you’re doing with your body.
You’re not up on it from the wrist here.
We’re pulling down from deeper back up here towards the shoulder.
So, just something like that.
Using the shoulder.
I got my core activated.
I’m not joking around.
Something like that.
Then maybe we say, well, do we keep the light in there?
You know, come back in, draw with the eraser a little bit.
We’ve got, you know, sweaty Kleenex here.
The stump, the eraser, you can bring all these guys out.
Let’s see, should I grab something else?
Let’s try it with this little guy, a little charcoal.
See what kind of trouble we can get in.
I’m going to draw one more of these shapes.
We’ll say something like that.
It could be a portrait.
It could be whatever.
We’re going to go full value, let’s say on a diagonal.
Laying in a gradient is really important.
The light is never going to hit an object the same the whole way across it.
You’ll start noticing this the more you observe.
And so practicing laying in a gradient,
I mean you’re going to laying in gradients for everything.
We’re going to get a little bit of tone, kind of feather it down, get your finger up.
Fingers are fun.
Too far down there.
Then we’ll start to lay in towards this corner.
You can get your finger in there, start to get something like that.
If you can step back and look, say dark, light, and then see if the middle strip looks like 50%.
Maybe it’s too light.
Maybe we just want to put a little more.
Remember to step back and check.
It’s like a puzzle.
Did we get it?
It looks a little better.
Maybe something like that.
We’ve been looking at dark to light using kind of like a full scale.
If we numbered these, maybe this goes all the way from ten to one or one to ten depending
on how you like to think of it.
Let’s look at just using one portion.
We can shift to either end of the spectrum and stay within the darks or within the lights.
We don’t need to use every single one of these ranges.
That’s talking about high key versus low key.
So, let’s do another one here.
Let’s start with the mostly light.
We’ll keep that—maybe we’ll do a horizontal one there.
Alright.
If we’re staying mostly light, our darkest dark is going to be maybe closer to like a
midrange thing.
I almost wanted to go back in there and fix it again.
See, this is what happens.
You’re never done.
You just have to put stuff away sometimes.
Let’s see if we can lay the darkest dark in it, 50%.
This paper is going to take this up.
It’s really going to be useful having.
Hopefully that Kleenex dried it out.
Let’s try it.
If we’re staying in high key we really don’t want to get it too, too dark.
Like a rub-in.
Okay, so we know we want this to be the tone of the paper, so we don’t want to get too
carried away yet.
Okay, let’s step back.
How are we looking on the gray?
It’s roughly 50%.
You guys will give it to me, right?
Alright, so we’ll lay in a little more, but we want it to hit white by the end here.
This middle range, we’ve got to be careful with it.
I’ve barely put too much tone on there.
I’m kind of just hoping with these accessories I can pull that tone across.
I don’t think I can make a mark that light.
Maybe if I was really good.
I mean, it’s hard.
It’s a lot harder.
You can think about the tools you’re using and say, well, let’s get an assist with
something like this.
That can really help.
So, something like that might be closer to a narrow range of value in a higher key.
Okay, let’s look at pushing it to the lower side.
This one might be a little easier.
It’s probably a little more easily forgiven.
Just getting crazy lay-in tone on dark.
Although, you’ve got to be pretty sure if you’re drawing and you’re just leaning
on it like this.
But, for this exercise we know this needs to be dark.
We’re going to put it in.
Also, this is easier to smear.
This one is going to sit more on top of that paper.
I’m not as worried about laying it in.
With this Conté, you know it seems like it can scratch the paper.
It can leave more of a delineation between strokes.
This one I think is probably more forgiving.
Alright, so we know we want the darkest dark.
What do we want the lightest light to be?
We’re going to go back.
We’re going to say maybe the middle, that middle gray.
Where this one started, that’s kind of where we want this one to end.
Let’s just see if we can get something close to that mid five on the ten to one scale.
I’m just kind of leaving more space in between the paper because the pressure of this, you
know, it kind of feels like all or nothing sometimes.
So, grabbing another tool.
See if I can.
Alright, so what do we think?
It’s kind of light maybe.
Maybe we can push it a little darker.
I like getting these ends in because then you have something to judge.
If I just started here and, I mean, I don’t know where it’s going to end up.
This is telling me, this is your start point, this is your end point, and then fill in the
middle.
You know, it’s like if you were going to draw an arm, you probably would want to estimate
at some point how long the arm was before you just started drawing all the little anatomy
along the way.
It’s kind of nice to know where something ends.
Kind of mark that.
Okay, so now if we decide we’re cool with this being the end point, now let’s make
this gradate into that.
We need a little more.
It’s just step by step.
A lot of little steps.
Do something, think about it.
Do something, think about it.
Alright.
Get the finger going.
Okay, what do you think?
Pretty close.
Maybe we can get some better kind of distinction there.
That’s about as dark as this can go.
I might want that to read a little bit lighter at the end.
Even when I’m doing this I’m totally moving my whole arm.
I love that I get to stand up and do this too.
That kind of gets you in the mood.
I think it’s easier to get in those traps of moving just your wrist when you’re sitting.
When you’re standing up it’s a little easier to remember you’re using your whole body.
So, something like that, maybe.
It’s pretty close.
So, you get the idea.
Just think about the way you’re laying it down.
Think about how you’re going to make those decisions.
I still keep wanting to go back and fix this, and that’s okay.
You can spend some time trying to get it right.
Just remember how much work it takes to do a good job and know that it’s supposed to.
The longer your work on this stuff, the faster you’ll get at it.
It always takes your presence.

Okay, here we have our basic forms in 3-D form.
This is actual 3-D.
We live in a 3-D world but our medium is flat.
Our drawing paper is flat.
The goal is to get our drawings to feel like these guys.
One of the ways we do that is to not only draw in 3-D but to think in 3-D, and part
of that is not only looking at the edges or the sides but also the backside, the underside,
the part you can’t see.
That’s the goal here, and that’s what we’ll be able to do in this lesson with
these drawing techniques, being able to draw through.
Also, the advantage of form drawing, 3-D drawing, we’ll be able to draw from imagination.
We can take these forms and draw them from almost any angle from imagination left to
right, top to bottom.
Like with the cube, also with the cylinder we're able to draw it
from any angle from imagination.
We’ll also make our forms feel like they’re coming at us.
You see that?
Normally when you think of cylinder you just think of one face.
Maybe you can see a little bit of the top or a little bit of the bottom, but we also
want to be able to do this.
And that’s cool.
That’s cool to make it feel like it’s coming at you or make it feel like it’s
going away from you as well.
The sphere, obviously from any angle, from every angle that you look at, the perfect
sphere, the shape will be the same, the outer edge will be the same.
But, I’ll show you some ways that you can make that feel more 3-D.
The thing that’s important about these is we’re not just drawing boxes and cylinders
and spheres, of course, we want to be able to combine these to create more complex forms.
These will eventually become the complex forms we all want to draw.
Simple objects, still-life objects, even landscapes and obviously and organic things like people, animals.
If you think about it, the human body can be broken down into these basic forms.
That’s what we’re going to focus on in this lesson.
How to be able to think in 3-D. Think of not just the front, but the back.
Not just the top but the bottom parts that you can’t see, and also be able to draw
in 3-D. Draw through the form.
Imagine that these are transparent things.
You can’t see through them, but in our mind’s eye we will be able to think transparently
and be able to draw even the parts we can’t see, and show the audience that our drawing
is just as real, and 2-D space can feel just as real as the real thing.
One of the ways we’ll be able to get the illusion of the form to make it look 3-D is
we’re going to be using perspective.
Now, you may be familiar with some concepts of perspective, and one of the major ideas
in perspective that’s very important that we’re going to be using in this lesson is
what’s known as the horizon line.
The horizon line is the imaginary line.
It means literally, you can think of it as the horizon on the earth when you’re looking
out into a landscape.
You can see that long, horizontal line.
What we want to do when we draw is we want to use what’s called the eyeline.
The difference between the horizon line and the eyeline is that the eyeline is really
where you are looking and also where your audience will be looking.
When I’ll be drawing in this lesson, when I mention the lesson, when I mention the eyeline.
One of the ways you can think about it to help you find the eyeline is by using a pencil
or anything you like to draw with and just put it right in front of your eyes.
This is my eyeline, really.
Also, your viewer’s eyeline, the audience, the people looking at our drawings.
And so, no the matter where you look, if you put the pencil directly in front of your eyes,
this becomes your eyeline.
You can even tilt your head.
When I talk about eyeline, this is what I’m referring to.
It’s not the horizon line, although the same principles and ideas of perspective,
the vanishing points and things, the converging lines apply to the eyeline, but for us, for
artists when we’re doing our 3-D form drawings, this is the one we want to focus on.
Not the horizon line, but the eyeline or the view from your eyes or the from the audience.

Okay, let's begin with shape basically you want to think of it
as the 2D, the silhouette, also known as the contour.
Other ways you can think about it, shape,
contour,
silhouette. French word.
Basically means the outer edge
and we're going to start with our basic forms.
In this case as a shape it is a circle and notice the way I'm
drawing again, drawing with the whole body, drawing through,
practicing, ghosting, before I commit to a line.
Really helps to make better circles and to make our forms
feel more 3D and real that's the end goal. Next is the cube,
the box.
And the outer edge of the box,
contour, silhouette very simple.
If we just look at the box itself the contour in this form
in this flat 2D graphic shape, silhouette of the box, the outer
edge almost appears like another shape,
hexagon shape, notice that. And then finally the cylinder.
Cylinder,
interesting shape.
It's basically like the box here but curved at the end.
So very simple, very graphic.
Okay. Next we're going to do the 3D drawing, starting with
the box here. Now what I want to do is review sketch
perspective because here we're learning constructions, remember
depends on our eye line.
I'm going to have to put down an eyeline first before I begin
to draw our box accurately because as we know in
perspective forms will converge to what's known as a vanishing
point. So let's say this imaginary line is my eye line
here. So I'm saying I'm roughly like looking smack in the
middle of our box in this case. So all of the the corners will
converge
to appoint known as the vanishing point.
Vanishing point, just call it VP, now you may be familiar with
this concept, so very basic concept in drawing but this is
what helps make our 3D form feel realistic. When we
converge to the vanishing point on our eye line this
also will tell the viewer because I'm not only paying
attention remember to our eye line, but the viewers as well.
So whoever looks at our drawing
will feel that they're in this position in 3D space. That's
what we're doing here. So that corner will also converge.
This corner will also converge.
And actually this point we'll also converge. Remember we want
to draw through,
treat it as if it's a transparent object like a piece
of glass.
Draw through. So this converges see the right vanishing point
or VP. These ends, these corners converge to the left BP.
You see that? Now we have something similar to
see that box drawing. Notice we can see the top plane of this
box. That means our eye level is above. Now
our eye level can be at the form and I'll show you what
that looks like real quick.
Same concept, eye level.
And let me just draw a couple of converging
lines here.
Sometimes I like to do this is to sketch a few
lines, not only helps me practice my dexterity drawing
straight lines remember
we had some exercises like that,
but now it gives me a choice as to how big or how
small I want my box because once I have these
converging lines, I can drop in some verticals
and just going to ghost those in. Remember always drawing through, in birth always drawing through
ghosting, practicing, rehearsing before we lay down the mark and
now look out how pretty my box is even though there's straight
lines drawn by hand. They look fairly okay.
And let me draw through. So this corner remember goes through.
Always want to think about drawing through when we're
beginning our 3D drawing. It's Ddrilling in our mind that there
is a backside.
This isn't just a shape. There's now a backside drawing
through, drawing through. So now we have our transparent form or
in this case our box.
Last our eye line can be below the box. Just going to draw a few
diagonals here just to
give me a rough estimate what my box could look like.
And then drop in a vertical, couple verticals, and now I have
an idea what my box form will be.
And then draw through,
draw through, from corner to the vanishing point,
you know, we don't have to be perfect notice - not perfect by any
means and I haven't used a ruler yet. That's why I always
recommend those exercises, right? Remember the exercises
where we learn, we get the muscle part of it down.
Okay so now we can see the under plate of our cube. And
I'm going to - I'm just going to add a little tone so you can
see what I'm talking about. See that we can see that. That
means our eye levels is below. We can see underneath the form our
eye level's below.
We can see through the form, roughly in the middle.
And this one is above and below we can see the top. So really
quick introduction into drawing a box form in basic perspective
using the eye line as your horizon line. Two vanishing
points in this case. This is also known as two point perspective.

And of course, obviously the next thing,
going back 3D, we can take our conventional horizon line
and we can tilt it
so that we can create really interesting forms and basically
draw them from any angle and even from imagination, right,
that's what I'm doing here. I'm not really looking at a photo
of a box anymore, I'm working from imagination and that's
eventually what we will be doing in this lesson.
Really that's the goal here is to draw any 3D form from
imagination in any position, any angle, any the angle any
rotation of the our eye line here.
So notice drawing through, drawing through, drawing with the
arm, drawing through, drawing with the arm, back side, drawing
through. It's not just the front corner it's the back corner. So
I'm going to draw a point remember, point, point. That's
the back corner of that box. Drawing through.
Doing those exercises will really help at this stage to
help you get close. I mean, you can see here I'm not exactly
at the VP, the vanishing point, but I'm close. I'm close enough
with that I can start to compensate in my mind's eye
knowing what, you know, roughly what this shape should look
like.
At any point I could also get more accurate with rulers
and things, straight edges.
Makes you think in 3D. So now this is no longer flat
shape. It's a form
turns this way, goes from here, goes back.
Because we've drawn that backside. We've drawn that backside
so we created that feeling and I often
do that. I imagine that I'm crawling, actually riding
on a 3D object. I imagine like the form is here, like the
forms that we saw earlier I'm actually imagining that I'm like
physically riding on it and then turning my head, you see
that? Same kind of thinking, if I was going this way,
right, I would go, go here, and then
in my mind's eye, I don't literally do it, but that's the
way I'm thinking and that's the goal here and that's why I
again draw through, draw through, draw through. 12 through

Now the next form is the cylinder and drawing the
cylinder in 3D is a little interesting because in a lot of
ways it's like the box, it has two straight edges. It also
has interesting idea known as the ellipse. Let's start with
our eye line again.
Drawing some
vanishing points here.
And what I'm going to do here is I'm drawing an ellipse
which is imagine in the center of the circle.
Imagine you cut
like an orange, you cut it off and then what you'll see in
perspective is what's known as an ellipse. That's what we're
doing here and I'll talk about ways that we can make our
ellipses more accurate.
A lot of ways you can think of them as boxes as well, see that?
Is it - there's also a middle. So what we want to do is imagine
the - let's say we'll take the bottom corner of this form.
We're drawing through, again drawing through, starting at the
front, drawing through, drawing through, making contact with the
sides because that's a corner again. The corner's most
imported when establishing the 2D. same with the top.
So what we want to do is we're going to cut this in half. So
from top to bottom.
Let's kind of draw an imaginary line through and I'll do the
same with the top.
Okay, let me get rid of this
so you can see better.
Prospective in a moment. And then what we're going to do is draw
an imaginary line that runs exactly down the middle of our
cylinder, basically cutting it into even halves, here the way to even halves here the way
we're looking at it and that point is exactly the middle of
the top and the bottom side of our cylinder.
And this is known as the center line.
Center line. This is important because this will help us draw
the cylinder from almost any angle. So for example
if I want to draw the cylinder - say here's my eyeline - I want
to try to draw the cylinder coming towards me like an arm or a
finger. Imagine your finger coming towards you, right,
finger's a cylinder like that. So I'm gonna draw vanishing point, and some dog banishing point, and
I'm going to draw
that is a center line. So how do we draw our cylinder around
this area.
Well I'm gonna start with a circle and
I'm going to imagine the point where
the center line is right in the center of the circle and notice
my circles not perfect, but it's okay because I
ghosted it, I'm still drawing it lightly.
And then I'm going to take
this cylinder here, a perfect 90 degrees to this perfect
center of this bottom plane, this bottom face, this bottom
side.
And when you do that you're able to quickly get
the points of intersection where you can pull that back
into the vanishing point.
We see that. And then now I can draw another ellipse, a
circle in perspective.
See that.
And then if I
go here,
draw the exact center where the corner is, where the sides meet,
the perfect half of the bottom, face in that case. This is
the front face, the one facing us. We'll call it the
front face and the bottom face. Let's draw our - let's say this
is our cylinder here or like my finger is a cylinder. So kind
of a rounding form. Then say it's going there, going this way
perfectly up and down. It's going this way.
So what I can do in that case is draw the center line.
And let's say it's coming
more towards me like that.
And roughly ghost in a circle.
So what I want to do is - what I want to do is here's the
exact center line. Here's exact circle, but I don't know where
these ends are. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that I
get a get a line that's perfectly 90 degrees see that? And
once I have that I go, oh, that's an end. That's an end
because
as I ghost in my circle, these four are divided evenly, see
that? See how even these feel, even these look to determine then how
dramatic or how much whether it's like this way or this way,
how much this cylinder tapers or meaning gets smaller as it
goes away from us or going towards a vanishing point,
remember? A vanishing point, the sides of the form taper. We can
put the vanishing point closer. In this case it will go really
far like that. We can put it farther away, right, finding, you
know, how big a taper and how big you want your form to be
really. Let's just put it here.
So I'm going to draw the sides going back, draw the sides going
back to the vanishing point.
In this case this is our eyeline and notice that this form is
below, our eye line is below
here because we're seeing the bottom. Remember if we can see the
bottom we're below.
Mine's a little off, that's okay, so I'm bringing it back. And
then what I want to do is remember, here's my line. I'm
happy with my center line, happy with my center line. So what
I'm going to do is try to get it to where it meets at a 90°.
Boom.
Perfect see that so that's just a quick way we can
draw our cylinder. And I'll show you a quick exercise too, so I'll
help you draw cylinders better. It's really really tough
because
ellipses or circles in perspective are incredibly tough.
One way you can think about it is
start with an ellipse here
and then start with a perfect circle. So imagine here we're
looking at our cylinder in perspective and here we're
looking at it directly, we're going from
here, this is our cylinder, we'll go from here to
whoop right here. So we want to draw a series of ellipses or
basically trying to imagine the top
of our form as it's
turning. So it gets fuller and fuller and fuller really as it
goes up.
It's just a quick little exercise you can do
to help you. And you could draw a bigger or smaller too that
one because you can also go down. So let me try that
exercise again a little bit smaller. So we start whoop,
right in the middle.
Right just draw this kind of oval shape again
ghosting using my whole body whole arm, perfect circle. Let's
draw the
sides here.
And then on the bottom also perfect circle meaning perfect
top view, perfect top view.
And as we get there, we become fuller and fuller
and fuller overlapped a little bit. But so just help you start
to think okay as this thing turns,
it goes from a perfect circle
to the ellipse, from the ellipse to the perfect circle or
perspective view to perfect top view. So that's just a quick
exercise you can do.

Okay, finally the last form is our good old friend the
sphere. But to distinguish s a 2d circle from a 3D circle, one
way you can think about it is
to simply imagine
the ellipse or
we take a knife and slice it down the middle.
So you can take a samurai sword or ninja knife right here and
slice down the middle.
And then we have the two sides. And one way you can do this is
by
taking like an orange, cutting it down the middle, you'll see
that divided into even forms
or you can
look at something like a tennis ball or basketball and those
will have a curved arc but that's really the concept is
basically a line that you draw through your form. And a lot of
times you can take like a lot of children's toys. There's
basically a sphere you cut in half or a little
container that you pop it open, right, you pop it open
and there's a like a toy inside. So that's one way you
can think of a sphere
as a
little children's gumball toy and put a little bit of
demonstration there and there's a - let's say there's a there's a
baby duck, that's a terrible baby duck
inside that's the idea. And we can do this with more than one
line. Obviously I just drew one. Remember again, see how
drawing through, I'm always drawing through, drawing through,
which is the back side. This is not a - this is not a 2D anymore.
This is the 3D. 3D forms have a back side. Now
we can go
both ways, we can cut
our sphere,
not top down, we can not just cut it this way, we can cut it
this way. We can go left or right. Just go whack, take our
little knife and go whack.
Right, cut it this way.
So this just helps me to think in 3D and helps to show our
viewer, our audience, that hey this is not this anymore. It's more
than the silhouette, the contour. This is a 3D form. Then
later we'll show you how you can really create that
illusion using a value and light.
And obviously, of course you can go - you don't have to go
left to right, you don't have to - don't have to stop at
two, we can go multiple directions. Whatever it takes to
really sell the idea that
this is
more than a flat shape and you can even
do what's called the rings, little concentric rings which
are basically ellipses, remember cut here. You know, you're
taking a slice here, taking a slice here, a Slice here, a slice
here,
whack-whack, whack-whack cutting like a big old egg or chicken like a big old egg or
an onion or an orange. If you have a sharp knife or
tomato, whack, whack, whack, right? Same concept.
But we do it on paper and our audience recognizes like oh,
that's like -
I've seen that before in many places, you know, it's like
that time I cut that egg open or sliced that tomato. It's the
same thing. If you take one of these slices, let's
say this was a tomato, take one of these slices boom, you know,
you got a tomato for your sandwich. We can't eat a 2D we
can't eat this, but we can eat a tomato guys, so.
And we can go crazy. We don't have to do tomato slices. We
want to make salsa. How do you make salsa. You cube, you dice,
which is going the other way guys, see that's up.
So you go from tomato sandwich to salsa, right? This will make
a nice big pile of salsa, but you know what I'm saying guys,
right this feels 3D. Okay 3D, check.
Not 3D.
Just as important though, that's still there, right? That's still
there. I'm going to get a dark pencil just to gonna get a dark pencil just to
prove a point.
Not my little sharp pencil, see that? It's not very dark. See what
I'm saying, that's still there. So we start here and we end here
and we do that by giving you a couple tools to do thatt. That eye
line, the center line and now cutting through we can't eat shapes,
but we can eat tomatoes. All right.
Now, let's talk about a couple little
exercises you can do to have some fun with this and really
improve your 3D drawing.

Alright, now let’s draw from imagination.
Our goal is draw a page of boxes.
I’ve got a big old page.
I’m not going to fill it here in this lesson, but I’ll show you how we can do that.
What I like to do first is ghost the vanishing point.
Remember, I was doing those things.
I won’t ghost in here, but I’ll do it really, really light.
Remember that?
I was doing that in the other sheet.
Then I’ll draw my verticals.
Then now I have an idea of what my box could look like.
I like to start with the shape, the outer shape.
We start with the shape.
Start with the shape and then always drawing through, taking a corner drawing through,
drawing through.
Front corner, back corner.
Then I have my first imagination box.
Which view am I?
Here is my imaginary eyeline.
Am I below this box or above it or right in the middle?
You saw that.
I’m below it.
See, you want to practice a couple of things.
One is a page of boxes.
You want to draw a bunch where your eyeline is below.
Eyeline middle.
Eyeline below middle.
Finally, the tilted or diagonal eyeline, also known as diagonal.
That’s below.
Let me do a middle.
I like this one.
It’s pretty straightforward.
A couple of diagonals, vanishing point.
Establishing in my mind where my vanishing point is, horizontal, establishing where the
sides and the corners are, the ends and the corners.
Boom, boom, boom.
Now, I’m going to draw through to remind myself that this is 3-D and not just 2-D.
Draw through.
Draw through.
Boom, boom, boom.
Eyeline top.
How are we going to do that?
Or above, that’s the right word.
So, basically like a bird.
It’s also known as bird’s eye view.
I like this one.
This one is pretty easy because I like to think I’m a bird sometimes when I draw.
I’m right above things, just kind of going back in my mind’s eye.
Ghosting.
Ghosting.
Drawing through.
Whole arm.
I’m going to move my body.
Ready?
You didn’t see it but I moved my whole body.
I swear I did.
Drawing though.
Drawing through.
Establishing the silhouette first, the outer shape.
Now, to make it 3-D. Boom.
Cutting right through.
Cutting right through.
Backside, boom.
Cutting through.
It just went from that corner to that corner.
This imaginary corner I made.
Draw through, 2-D to 3-D. I like to darken the outer edge and the front corners, just
so I know this is where we are.
Little bird.
Top plane.
Top.
Now I’m going to tilt.
Next one is tilt.
Here I’m going to—let me start with some verticals here just for fun.
Then I’m going to draw through the imaginary vanishing point and then go back to vanishing
point number two, the one on the opposite side of our eyeline.
Now I have my sides, my two sides and the corner.
The corner that I’m looking at.
It’s more facing toward me.
For me, I almost do, I find a vanishing point second.
That’s kind of the way I like to approach a sketch perspective.
Obviously, if I wanted to make a more accurate drawing I would not do it that way.
Accurate, but I would make the perspective tighter.
Really more mathematically precise.
I think it’s a better way to put it.
You know, we’re just practicing it here.
Just doing these nice little warm-ups.
Kind of at angle.
This is below.
Here is an eyeline through that glass where you see an imaginary box.
Boom.
That’s an example of a diagonal box.
I want you guys to fill a whole page like this.
When you get comfortable you can even just kind of sketch, kind of freehand without having
to draw the long diagonals.
It does help when you’re drawing the backside.
These all have to converge.
The corners of this side of the box or the face all have to converge at the same vanishing
point.
It does help to draw though in that case.
Same with these corners here.
They all have to converge.
One, two, three, four points all have to converge to the same one.
This does help a little bit.
As we know, these become parallel lines.
Again, this is just sketch perspective.
We have a lot of great lessons in the library too, from some great teachers like Gary Meyer,
one of my favorite examples.
If you want to dig deeper into the true, more accurate, more precise mathematical perspective.
Okay, so just one way.
Notice I didn’t get too deep with the long diagonals, more of a sketch style.
Okay, next is cylinder.
The cylinder, same thing.
Page of cylinders.
That’s exercise number one.
Number two is a page of cylinders.
Same thing.
From below, eyeline below.
Middle, above, and diagonal.
What I like to do is I like to start—let’s say I’m below this one.
I like to start with one of the top planes, top face, top side.
I’m going to put myself below this one.
I’m looking up here.
Here is my eye.
Remember to get this more accurate, I want to first find the center so I’m going to
cut this right down the middle to find my center line.
To get this center line to work, these ends to work, I’m going to cut this bottom face
in half—make sure I get a perfect 90 degrees.
Now I have this corner and this corner, and I can drag this up.
Go sit up.
Drawing with the whole arm, so I’m able to connect.
I can do a quick check.
That’s feels pretty good.
I notice—see this corner of my circle is off.
Now I better gauge the shapes so I have one, two, three, four even sides.
So, that’s the below.
I drew through it and I’m going to darken so I know where I’m at.
Just darken that side so I know where I’m at below.
Right in the middle.
For these I like to—for the middle one, what’s interesting about this one is that
you actually won’t be able to see other side.
First, is to check my perspective.
Make sure I’m looking good.
Find my center line.
Cut this in half.
Cut this in half.
Make sure it’s 90 degrees.
Now I can find the sides.
Sketch them out.
I’m going to darken the corner and the ends.
Notice here I don’t see either face because I’m right in the middle.
My eyeline is here.
I’m right in the middle.
I don’t see either face.
I still draw through because it’s there.
The 3-D backside is there.
We’re drawing through.
I’m imagining following this top edge all the way around the cylinder.
It’s there.
I find the eyeline above.
I’m a little bird and I’m above.
Real simple.
Just quickly sketch it in and find my eyeline.
Center line, excuse me.
Then cut the face that I see in half.
Look at my first—check the, make sure it’s 90 degrees.
Make sure that these are good.
They’re about even.
Drawing through, ghosting.
Drawing with the whole body helps with that.
Bring the sides down.
Boom, boom, boom.
That’s what it would look like if it was there.
I’m checking myself.
See if it’s there.
Now, let’s tilt these real quick.
What I’m going to do here is draw a series of diagonals until I find one that could be
a nice center line.
I like this one.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to start with actually the 90 degree.
That’s one way to work.
Then fill in my oval.
Notice I went from here.
Then I made an oval.
Now I’m just searching.
I’m really searching.
I’m not committed to an oval or an ellipse yet.
Until get one that feels for even quadrants.
When I get there, at least for sure this one, it’s my center line.
That’s the most important.
This thing is going to go this way.
I want to make sure that it feels right.
When I get one that I like then I kind of darken it.
These feel pretty good.
Now, what I’m going to do here instead of being even, I’m going to taper it a little
bit, meaning it’s coming toward me a little bit.
All I have to do is taper the sides, really.
See that?
Basically, taper means get smaller and smaller and smaller.
These are even, even, even.
This is, whoop, getting a little bit smaller.
These actually go to a vanishing point.
This is known as three-point perspective.
But, again, there will be a lot of lessons in this library about perspective.
Remember, to get this to feel right, bring this down and make sure these two sides are
even.
I find the imaginary center point of the center line.
Draw the imaginary line that cuts our bottom side in half to get three-quarter.
What this does is gives us a tilted eyeline.
It goes from here to here.
Actually, since the eyeline is above, the eyeline would be closer to here, actually,
in true perspective.
Darken it but keeping the backside in mind.
We’ll darken this top just to show you where I’m at.
Also, we can go this way as well.
I’m going to go take our cylinder and go, whoop, this way.
I’m going into the paper real quick.
I’ll show you what that looks like.
One way I do that is I start with some diagonals.
I really want the sides, I really want the sides, and then one of these diagonals can
become my center line.
To do that I’m going to make sure that it cuts this circle perfectly for this ellipse.
Not a true circle.
It’s an ellipse.
What I’m going to do is make sure it cuts it perfectly in half.
Ghosting it in.
Then I’m going to draw an imaginary line that’s not 90 degrees.
So that’s way off.
I’ve got to do more line drawing exercises, right.
Find that.
Make sure these taper or converge.
Get smaller.
These are going toward a vanishing point.
Then same thing.
Draw a circle that’s perfectly cut in half at the center line.
Then imaginary line.
So, this is a sketch cylinder in perspective going away from me.
This is just the face that we’re looking at.
Do a page of these going away from you.
Going up and away.
Doing down and away where your eyeline is above or below, in the middle, or above.
Remember, at the middle—actually, I’m just going to lightly erase.
If you’re at the middle, remember you won’t see.
You’ll only see the sides and the corner.
You won’t see the top face.
One last thing I want to touch on is the idea of stretching.
Notice how we’re able to make cylinders of various lengths.
Let’s talk about stretching.
If you want to draw a box.
If you want to draw a rectangle it’s really the same idea here.
It’s basically just a box that you pull.
We’ll touch more on that in later lessons.
You see how I didn’t just cap it here to try to make a nice cube,
perfect cube, all even sides.
I just kept it later at the end.
We still draw through no matter what the form is.
Draw through, think of the backside.
In later lessons, we’ll talk more advanced ways to bend form.
That’s a quick imagination drawing exercise.

Alright, now that you guys have been drawing some basic forms, we’re going to combine
what you just learned into some cool household objects.
Stay tuned and start checking things out.
You’re going to find that those forms are all over the place.
If you’re ready to get drawing, let’s begin.
Starting with our basic shapes.
I want to draw through.
Draw with your arm, ghosting.
Draw your circle and then imagine the slice of your circle.
Always thinking of the backside.
Same with the box.
Taking it to the vanishing point.
And again, drawing through.
Drawing through.
Drawing through.
Always want to think of the backside.
Same with the cylinder.
Remember, the cylinder has center line as well.
Always thinking of the backside.
We’re basically going to take these guys, combine them, and modify them to create some
basic forms.
Some of the most common household objects, pretty much any object you draw can be made
of basic forms.
That’s what we’re going to demonstrate here.
For this lesson, I’ve picked out three household objects that are very common to find: a cup,
a tube of paint, and a hammer.
I’m going to start with a coffee cup.
Before I do that, I want to talk real quick about pinching, turning, and bending.
Remember, how we were able to use our vanishing point, our eyeline to draw our forms in perspective.
I briefly touched on that.
We can also take our square and just basically pull the backside back to stretch.
We go from a square to a long rectangle, for example.
We can even also do a bend, which would become very helpful.
One way to do that is instead of connecting it in the straight line, we can connect it
in a curve.
Maybe draw a curve.
Then you can take this—remember, the back side of it, the back face, the back end we
want to draw through.
In this case, pretend like now it’s facing in front of us.
Go from one end to the other.
Go from this corner to this corner and sort of follow the curve and follow the curve here.
Really, we’re just basically following the original curve we had.
Of course, you want to draw through.
This corner, this corner.
The underside, even though we can’t see it, it’s still there in 3-D. Remember, these
are 3-D forms.
We’re trying to create the illusion of 3-D forms on 2-D paper.
That’s an example of a bend.
Of course, we can also do it the opposite way.
Instead of going back here, we can take the back face and go there and then draw a curve.
You know, if we want it to feel like it’s going back into space, remember just to make
this smaller, remember they always taper or converge, get smaller as they go back into
space, back towards the vanishing point, remember.
So, that’s one way.
Draw through.
Always thinking of underplane.
Drawing though.
This is one way we can start to curve and bend.
Same with the cylinder.
Cylinders already naturally taper.
Drawing through.
Tapering as it goes toward the vanishing point.
We can do the same thing.
Let’s curve this one this way.
The cylinder is facing here.
The other face, this face is now here so we can just draw a curve.
First, let’s figure out where that guy is.
Okay, now the center line goes right through.
This was a little bit smaller, so I’m just going to use a sketch idea.
It doesn’t have to be precise and perfect and just follow the curves as best as I can.
In this case, I’m tapering it.
It’s a tapered seal.
They both start to face the same direction.
Sometimes I like to draw the cross-sections or the slices.
Remember, how we sliced a little tomato there, a cube.
Even this guy we can stretch it to make an oval.
Do you see that?
Go from circle to oval or egg, even.
That’s just a quick idea of stretching and bending your basic forms.
We don’t have to draw boxes, boxes, boxes.
You can draw rectangles and you don’t have to draw straights all the time.
You can use curves to connect the front face and the backside face.
Alright, so now let’s construct same shapes, same ideas, same techniques, and we’re going
to construct with household objects.
I’m going to start with a cup, basic coffee cup.
When I look at the cup I see a cylinder.
I think it’s pretty obvious.
If you look at the part where you pour your coffee or pour your liquid.
It’s clearly a cylinder.
This one is very obviously a cylinder.
The only thing in question would be the handle.
To me, the handle really, at least the coffee cups that I usually drink out of, they’re
basically cylinders, right, with a bend.
I mean this could even be a coffee cup or a handle.
I’m just going to approach it as that.
One, basic cylinder and then one cylinder with a bend.
Let’s start with that.
I’m going to start by just drawing my top, ghosting, drawing through.
Then I’m going to kind of cut right down the middle, so divide this into two even halves.
Then I’m going to divide the top, the opening of the coffee cup also into two upper and
lower halves.
I look at this and I feel that it’s pretty good in terms of they’re pretty even.
I want to put my center line there.
This I don’t have to commit to yet.
I’m still in the ghosting, kind of sketchy stage.
Then I’m going to draw lines straight down, straight down.
This doesn’t taper too much.
It does.
We’ve done only two-point perspective, but in reality, in nature, there are multiple
vanishing point, and this one has a three-point perspective.
It does eventually taper, but that’s for—there are much more detailed perspective lessons
in the library as well.
Now, all I have to do is close my coffee cup and kind of look at my reference to see how
far, how tall my coffee cup is.
Again, I’m going to draw where the cup rests on the table, but I’m going to draw through.
It’s not a flat form.
I’m thinking of the backside.
Draw through there.
Draw through there.
I want to feel confident about these quadrants.
Now I know that, oh, the sides are about here.
Do you see that?
This one feels pretty good.
Also, this one has a little foot.
It’s basically the part where it rests on the table.
It’s a ceramic coffee mug and the opening.
You can think of the opening as well as a curved little cylinder.
That’s the body of my coffee cup.
The tricky part is this guy.
What I’m doing I start with the center line.
See that?
It’s a center line.
Again, drawing with my whole arm.
I’m not doing this.
I’m drawing through.
I’m actually kind of cutting right through the middle.
I’m imagining where this makes contact with the actual body of the mug.
I’m picturing it kind of like that.
This bottom half, this top one will make contact kind of like that.
It’s behind us.
We can still draw through.
We can still imagine it.
Our audience will be able to see it as well.
Now, remember how we just connect the curve.
This is a straight.
Now we can just connect the two openings with the curved line.
I know you may—this part is covered up by another of our objects.
Actually, I made mine too far.
I used too much gesture, almost, so let me bring that back.
It starts to look a little cartoony or unnatural.
Too stylized like a cartoon.
I want to bring it back to realism.
I notice this one has a little bit of straight, and then it kind of bends down a little bit.
It’s almost perpendicular along the same.
It’s parallel to the center line, the horizontal center but it kind of dips down.
I want to make that a little fatter.
I think this end is a little bit bigger than the bottom end.
I think.
I’m not quite sure.
At least not from the reference.
I’m going to connect this point
here and here where the center meets and just kind of bring it down where the center of
this meets.
Again, just sketch perspective, with practice you’ll be able to get these, especially
if you do the curve exercises.
I’ll be able to look your curves look really, really good.
That’s pretty much right there.
One thing I like to do too is I like to draw the cross-sections just so I know that it’s
sort of a check to myself.
Make sure that the cylinder is nice and consistent throughout.
Then if I want I can darken.
Take another pencil and pretty much darken little parts of the cup.
The outer side, you know, remember we started with 2-D shapes and focused on the silhouette.
Sometimes I like to reinforce the silhouette and make that a little bit more clear.
Right now the silhouette has the same thickness as the construction drawing underneath.
There is my little coffee cup.
It’s basically a cylinder with a curved cylinder.
Okay, the next object I’m going to draw is the tube of paint.
This one is a little bit interesting because it kind of has a flat top and a curved bottom.
I definitely see the cylinder.
I don’t know if you guys see that, especially the cap.
We’re looking at it upside down here in the reference, so I starts as a curve and
then it kind of pinches.
What that tells me is that it’s a cylinder that becomes almost—you close the top.
Imagine if you close the top.
Imagine if you had like the inside of a paper towel, that little thing at the top of the
paper towel inside, or a toilet paper roll, and you just squeeze.
That’s exactly what’s happening here.
It’s basically a cylinder with the pinch top.
Let’s start with—it’s a cylinder, let’s start with the center line.
Then I’m going to ghost in where the cap is and then where the cylinder of the bottom
edge, the bottom cylinder of the—I’m going to make that a little bigger.
The bottom edge of the tube is right here.
Then I’m just going to draw it.
I’m going to pretend like in the moment that the top hasn’t been pinched.
Notice that I’m putting my whole body into this line.
Get a nice beautiful long, beautiful straight.
Definitely review those exercises to get that dexterity.
I’m going to continue to build down and build this cylinder.
It’s pretty much, remember the eye level is pretty much even or right in the middle
of it.
It doesn’t taper that much.
I’m basically drawing the cap which is another cylinder and the part where the cap meets
the body of the tube of paint is another cylinder.
We did that many, many times.
Hopefully you did your page.
Now, here’s the interesting part.
To me, we could really complete this drawing just by doing this at the end.
What we really want to do is to describe what’s happening, the change, we need the next element,
which we’ll come to in another lesson, in another clip, is the light and shadow.
What I’m going to do is just basically create a straight.
I’m going to draw through again.
This one is interesting.
Remember how I drew these concentric rings or the cross-section?
This one I’m going to draw the cross-sections too, but they’re actually there in the form
of the rings and the label.
You see those black rings on the label?
The label of this tube of paint.
I’m going to basically just draw them there.
To make this more realistic, obviously you can erase out, but I’m going to leave that
there just to stress a point that we do draw through, and we do consider the backside,
which makes our drawing feel three-dimensional.
Again, again, again.
Worth repeating again.
It’s a nice pinch.
Then I’m just going to quickly draw that circle where that label is.
I don’t have to go too detailed.
That’s more of a detail in the form.
It just looks interesting to me so I put that in there.
This is the bottom of the label.
The reason why I put that label is there is because these rings act as a cross-section
to help me tell the story that this is a 3-D form.
Alright, so that’s a quick tube of paint.
It’s basically a cylinder, kind of like what we did here.
It’s almost simpler than what we had here because of the curve, but we had a tricky
little part where it pinched.
Okay, our last object is the hamper.
I’m looking at the hammer in the reference.
To me, I see three forms.
I see three forms.
I see a cylinder.
I see a rectangle which is a box, a box at the head, cylinder, cylinder, and a modified
box at the claw part of the hammer, the backside of the hammer.
Let’s talk about how we can tackle that.
Let’s start with the body.
Obviously, the long body is what is kind of a—it’s all box, actually, even the handle.
So, let me do that.
Remember how we took a box and turned it into a long rectangle?
Let’s do that.
I’m going to start.
I don’t want to go too far here.
This may be the top of the hammer here.
I’m going to go there and kind of draw—remember, the vanishing points?
These will go to a vanishing point.
These go to a vanishing point obviously.
So, that’s a nice long box.
Before we go into more detail, let’s talk about the head of the hammer, which to me
is a box.
It’s clearly a box here.
Here is a curve leading to the claw.
We’ll talk about that in a minute.
There are a couple of ways we can approach that.
It’s a little bit of a taper.
Remember taper means it converges or it gets smaller in one end, bigger in one end.
This box also has a vanishing point.
Remember, it’s the same vanishing point as this one.
Let’s try to keep that consistent.
It doesn’t have to be perfect because, again, many more detailed lessons cover that, the
perspective part.
But, in sketch when we’re practicing form we just want to keep that it mind.
Notice how my body is actually moving my entire hand here.
The head or the face, the smasher part.
I don’t know what else to call it.
It’s basically a cylinder.
It’s a multiple cylinder.
It kind of gets bigger at one end, must like what we did here.
Find the center.
Ghost to the vanishing point over here.
Get that 90 degrees so that I know where form is.
That one part is just a little bit bigger.
I’m just going to draw another ring freehand there.
Then what I’m going to do is go back to the vanishing point at the end.
Then it has a nice—and then I’m going to draw through.
Draw through, draw through.
It’s basically a cylinder.
It’s a tight little cylinder.
Drawing through.
As a curve connection, and that’s really all there is to it.
Now, there is more detail in the shape of this, more nuance, more subtleties too, but
we’ll get to that in the later lesson.
That’s pretty much the basics of the head.
Before we get to the claw, let’s touch on the handle.
The handle is really simple.
We’re pretty much done with the handle.
There is one tiny detail or two that we need to address, and that’s how it goes from
a very obvious rectangle shape, right, and it kind of tapers in the middle a little bit.
I don’t know if you guys can see that.
Then there is that end or the corner where the rubber handle is.
Now it becomes a little bit curved, so it kind of does this kind of thing.
What we’re going to do—it’s not quite a cylinder as you can see.
It’s not quite that.
What we’re going to do is kind of go somewhere between.
Notice how it kind of bulges in the middle.
I’m just going to kind of go somewhere between, not quite a cylinder, not quite a rectangle,
somewhere in between.
You can see it at the bottom.
It’s not a square anymore, right?
It’s more of curve, an ellipse.
It’s not the ellipse of a circle.
It’s actually the ellipse of an oval shape.
It’s not a perfect circle.
There is the handle.
Then there is one nuance or one subtlety—it’s that it doesn’t go all the way through.
Notice around here it pinches and it tapers back down.
I’m just going to do that.
See that?
It kind of pinches and tapers back down.
Actually, where it starts to curve up it’s also a good area to put a cross-section.
It’s actually not a perfect circle.
I’m trying to draw a perfect circle which is making my drawing a little bit weird, a
little bit funky.
It’s more like this, huh?
Or something like that.
Just a curved rectangle, there you go.
I would suggest that in the back.
That’s just a nice, subtle detail that makes the handle feel much more realistic and cool,
more accurate for sure.
Now, the last thing is the curve of the claw.
It’s like a little claw.
How can we do that?
There is a couple of ways.
We can think of it as a cylinder.
It might be the best way, actually.
Think of it as a long, big old cylinder.
Then we just cut a little section out of it.
It could be the best way.
Let’s look at it from top view.
This is the hammer here.
Then we just take this cylinder and then cut into it.
Right?
That’s probably the best way to do that.
Actually, let’s do that.
I was also going to suggest we take a box.
We can take a box—it’s a long rectangle like this, and then we can just curve it.
That would be a great way too, actually.
Actually, let’s do that.
Then the claw part would just kind of find the middle of it.
Sort of halfway or near halfway, this probably would be a halfway of this curve.
A little bit closer to the head we just cut into it like that.
Of course, there is a form now, there is a top side of it now.
We always want to draw through.
I like this idea better.
There are lots of ways we could handle this, but I like that better.
I want to keep that on there.
Let’s do that.
Let’s draw a box.
Pinch it at the end and then bend it.
What I’m going to do is start with a box, my rectangle form.
It’s actually the same height as the head, the head of the hammer.
To find the bottom we just find the corner right here and draw through in perspective.
Going to the vanishing point.
There is the corner right there, roughly.
I’m going to take this guy.
Instead of going back, I’m going to curve it.
It’s a little bit too curvy, curvy back.
In the bottom side.
We can’t see it, but we can draw it in our drawing.
Draw through and then I’m going to close it at the end.
Now this becomes a form.
Then we take the topside.
Basically, come down a little bit.
I’m looking at the referencing, how thick this claw is, the top face of it.
That feels about right, right there.
That’s a little bit of a thickness.
There is no need to measure or be super accurate, just kind of going, you know, it’s roughly
aligned with the center of this head or close to the line of the head, so that’s where
I’m going to start.
Then bring it back down.
This is just basically taking this guy, pinching it, and then curving it at the same time.
Then find the center.
From here to here, roughly the center would be right here.
Curve it through.
This should lead to the center of where the center line of the cylinder here, and then
a little bit past halfway make a little cut, make a little cut.
Basically, draw a line from the center—not toward the center here, but a little bit down
to make that V-shaped opening.
Then draw and suggest the face, top face now, the claw.
I could even erase a little bit so you can see it better.
There it is.
Now I’m going to take a thicker, darker pencil and really nail down the outline.
I’m not going to erase the construction lines, which would make all this work we did,
which would make it feel more realistic and cool, but I’m going to leave those up there
for now and just sort of draw the front-facing corners, like here, the front-facing corner
there, overlapping corner there.
The outer edge of the handle, the outer edge of the handle.
This little corner here.
As you can see, that’s pretty much a nice drawing of a hammer using the basic forms.
As you can see, we’re able to take everything we learned, the 3-D drawing and create a little
bit more complex forms, just stuff found around the house.
You can draw anything.
You don’t have to draw these objects.
It just shows you how you can take the basic forms, turn them into pretty much anything
you want, even draw from imagination.
That’s the end of this lesson, and then later we’ll get into how to make these feel
even more real by using value, light, and shadow.

In this lesson, we're going to talk about one of the most
powerful tools that you can use to make your drawings come to
life. And that's the laws of light and basically the laws of
light help us to control and manage and understand the
awesome complexity of light. Light is complex, light and
shadow is complex, values are complex as you may know, as
you have seen we can go lots of different ways. So the laws of
light help us to better understand and manage that. Now
the good news for you is that there's only two laws of light,
the first is different value, different plane, and we're
going to talk about that next. And the second is every thing and the second is every thing
that receives light is also a source of light.
So the first concept of the laws of light is that
a different value is a different plane. So what that
means is
that when a form changes value, goes from one value to
another, it actually means that it's a plane change. So what is
a plane? Now a plane, I define planes as a theoretical
flattening of an organic, three dimensional curved form. So
here's some wonderful
3D diagrams to help help me better explain the idea of
planes. Now this is a cylinder form as you can see.
It's curved, right, full round, kind of like a
column or a tall block a curved cylinder.
Now we can think of cylinders when we shine a light. We shine
a bright light you can see that it produces a light and
shadow side.
We can think of cylinder not just in curved form when we're
lighting the form, when we start to like the form we want to
think about it and its most basic idea, which is a plane.
Remember we start with only the light and only the shadow, we
start with two values, light and dark, light and shadow and
that's how we begin to light a curved form like a cylinder is
this way, one form's hitting, facing light.
One side of the form's facing light and therefore the other
side's facing shadows. In a lot of ways we're going from this
idea
to this idea of a light
plane and a shadow plane. See that? It's kind of a creating a
corner and that's what this is,
creating a corner. Now, you can see that, say well Chris there's
no corners. It's round of course, but as artists we can suggest
corners and that's what planes are, theoretical flattening of a
curved surface.
So here's a progression of how we can go
because in my mind's eye I look at this
but I see this and then as we draw we go from this form,
light, shadow, light facing plane, shadow facing plane, one corner,
and then we go to this idea. So basically we take this form and
we curve it. Start it here. And then right you see that start it
here with light facing plane, shadow plane. Now we add a
second plane which becomes a half tone plane, so light and
half tones and shadow, then it curves around and around and
around. Okay, so now we're starting to add
more sides or more planes, went from two planes idea to three
planes.
Now we go from three planes to
adding two more, four planes. We're basically dividing this
corner, adding two more planes. So one, two, three, four, five
total on this side. So it's starting to go from
here to here to here and then eventually we want it to be a
full curve and all this is to me is really a bunch more of
these. We take this corner, split that up, take this corner,
split that up. Basically kind of like facets of a diamond and
I'll show you another example of that.
So you see how it starts to curve, starts to round, because
what we're really doing
as artists, we're drawing planes, we're adding planes to round the were adding planes to rounded
form and we're going also in the reverse. We begin our three
dimensional value renderings by starting with the most
rudimentary two plane, two value idea. And also I just wanted to
show you guys that
not just obviously the curve of the cylinder but it's
also the top corner,
right? So this is a hard corner, but just like how we
soften it here by adding planes, we can do the same thing. We
can bend it. You can almost go like this, go from this hard
corner to adding more planes, adding more cuts, adding more
subdivisions. Lots of different ways you may have heard of the
concept. Hard corner can become
a plane, you see that?
Right
speaking of facets of a diamond, let me show you
another example that might help illustrate this idea of
planes. Okay, this next example might help you understand
planes better because when I think of planes I
kind of imagine a diamond because you know, how a diamond
can have little facets, bunch of faces, and that's kind of
what this is. This is sort of this sphere like thing but it
has flat surfaces, flat planes. It has corners, right? When I
see this, when I want to draw a round organic form, my first
instinct is to flatten it, think of it as planes. Remember how
we turned - we took the cylinder and turn it into that
basically that triangle corner, boxy shape same thing here with
the curves here. To me these are identical. These are both
spheres. One has a planar idea, one is a curved more natural
idea, one is nature, one in a lot of ways to me is an
artistic idea, a draftsmans idea. Someone who likes to draw,
design, and add light and shadow because we have to start here
because you know, we can see the the awesome complexity of
all these values here. We shine a light on a spotlight, see all
the awesome complexities of light and shadow,
and we'll get into that as well.
So to better manage all of those tones we can get, let's
first think of it as boom two values, light, shadow, and then
gradually we'll add facets, we'll add planes, we'll add cuts and
corners. So you see this
natural, planar, and that's what we're going to get into in this
lesson. So let me show you one more example so we really
drive this point home about planes. All right guys, this
last example, this really is what we're heading up to not just
this entire series but to me as artists is that
we want to be able to turn the awesome complexity of the
natural world just like the cylinder, turn it into that box,
just like the perfect sphere, the globe. We want to turn it into
a faceted diamond or think of it as faceted diamond. We want
to turn the awesome complexity of something as incredibly
complex as the human face and think of it
as a series of planes because this will help
us to light our complex form like the figure or face. We
can start by seeing that the front has a curve like a
cylinder but remember the cylinder too we could flatten it,
create planes, theoretically flattened it to help us to
manage the values, right? And if we shine a light this is going
to have millions or infinite range of value. But here we one,
two, three, four, five only five to work with. In this case. We
can break it down even more as you saw with the sphere.
And notice how just comparing the top, look at the awesome
complexity there, detail here. Ridge s, grooves, details, River Ridge has grooves details
curves, but here one, two, three, four, right?
Simplifying, limiting what we have. Now we don't end here of
course, we start here. Whenever I look at a face, my mind
instantly goes to this image. I want to know where
light and shadow meets and ends so that's the corner and we'll
talk about that as well. Where light and shadow meet and
the interaction.
But you see how everything has planes and as artists we want
to begin to think this way and order for us to really
capture and create the illusion of this the natural organic
real three-dimensional world on our own 2D surfaces. So
that's a brief brief introduction into planes.
Now, we're going to talk about the laws of light and how we
can apply them in our work.
There's really only two laws of light. So that's the good news.
Only two things you have to worry about. But before we get
into that, let's talk about light and shadow, that's really
what this is. Well, we're going to be able to first show you
what the components of light and shadow are and then the
laws of light will help us to apply that knowledge. So let me
start with just a basic -
again drawing through, right? A basic sphere.
And what I want to do is shine a light on our sphere. So I'm just
going to pick a spot.
Somewhere here, pretend this is my light source.
Now what's going to happen is that when we get in a sphere it
will produce light and shadow
pattern, right? You know when you have like an apple or an
orange on a table and you have your kitchen light, you see that
one side is in light and one side will be in shadow.
So based on my light direction here, I'm going to put a little
shadow note there.
I'm doing this for imagination, but you can use reference as
well, or do like I was mentioning and
shine a light on a form on an object, actual
object. Then what this is is it's called the cast shadow,
we'll talk more about that as well, it's the projection.
Now
going to take our form, our little line drawing so far,
and I'm going to
fill-in or darken the
little shadow pattern I drew
including the cast shadow.
And let's put this in. Gonna draw the table as well behind
it.
I got my form,
surface that it's on, the light side, and the shadow side.
Light side, shadow side.
And let me start to bring some tone over here into the light
side.
And we'll talk about the individual components interview individual components
first and just kind of quickly go through this drawing here.
There's my little ball.
And one more little accent there.
And another gradation. Remember we can always use
gradations, one of the techniques that
we've been practicing. Hopefully you guys been
doing your exercises.
Many ways to shade and gradation is one of them, one of
the techniques
and
let me do
that little outline there, outline the contour. Contour.
And I'm going to use my finger to soften this tone a little bit
and I'm going to leave this little section here is known as
the highlight. So
I'll expand on that as well.
Okay,
so what we have here is
a form in light, a basic sphere, a ball,
and let's talk about what the individual components of the
light and shadow are because they're really important moving
forward.
And it helps us to identify them so that we know
what we're seeing when we're drawing from
reference or from life and what we can create in our own
drawings and we drop imagination we compose our own
scene, create our own scenes.
It's a bit of a
little wobble in my orange there. I was trying to make it a
perfect ball, but definitely looks like an orange now.
Okay, so let's talk about the components of light and shadow.
Okay what we have here
is really two things we need to consider. The light side and
the shadow side.
Now the shadow itself has three different unique parts. There's
the shadow body, which is right here. The shadow body, right?
Then there's this thing that's on our imaginary table on the on our imaginary table
here or surface, and that's what's called the cast shadow.
What a cast shadow is a projection of
the form of shadow onto a surface. What it really is it's
blocking this - here's just imagine the light ray
is being blocked by this form which creates the shadow
body, but that light ray will continue to hit the surface,
it will continue to hit the surface, but where it's being
blocked by the form it creates a projection or a shadow shape
on the surface and that's the cast shadow.
Let me darken mine a little bit.
Make it a little bit darker there.
That's the cast shadow.
So you have shadow, body, cast shadow. Now in the shadow body
itself, the one part
we want to pay attention to is what's called the core shadow
and the core shadow occurs at the border.
By border I mean this part right here is called the core
shadow and that's where light and shadow meet. So you see
there's a nice area
right here, and we're gonna darken it a little bit. We'll talk more
about that as well,
why that's important. You see where it goes from clearly
light lighter here. It's clearly darker here and
there's a sort of a line. It's not quite a line because it's
a round form, but
there's a point where or an area where they meet and
that's called the core shadow. Basically the core shadow is the basic. The core Shadow is the
border between light and shadow, the border of between light and
shadow is known as the core shadow
and we'll talk in more detail about that as well. It's a
pretty important part of the shadow and finally, this is the
last part of the shadow
I want to introduce and that's this little guy here. Notice how
this part is really really dark compared to this part of this
part of the shadow.
And that's because this part is where the form, the ball, touches
the table and no light can get in. No light can get in. So it's
really really dark, right? No light can come in and bounce
back, bounce back, bounce back right like it does here. Bounce
back here.
And that's - this is the second to last part
actually and that's the - it's called the occlusion shadow.
Hope I'm spelling that right.
Also known as contact shadow.
Contact Shadow.
That's because when two forms touch - two forms touch, the
sphere and the table they create a point where light
really can't get in, no light can get in here. So it's really
really dark. It's the darkest part of the shadow. Going to
make a note of that.
Darkest
part
of shadow. Darkest part of shadow.
and finally the last part, this is the last part of the shadow
I promise,
is the part of the shadow body
where light comes from the light source, in this case in the upper
left, and the environment light also comes back in.
Maybe there's other light sources here, maybe there's
bright colored objects here.
Where light can come in and reflect or make contact with
the shadow itself and seemingly lighten the shadow body, notice
it's a little bit lighter here than it is at the core shadow.
And that part is known as reflected light.
Reflected
light. Also known as bounce light. Another way to look at
it.
That's because it literally is light from the light source
reflecting off other surfaces and coming back into the shadow
or bouncing off surfaces back into the shadow. So that's why
it really becomes
a lot lighter depending on what's around it and depending,
there's a lot of variables but depending on the color of this
object and the intensity of the light and what's around it. But
for example in this example, these are light colored objects
against a fairly light colored imaginary sphere. So a
lot of light is coming back in, polluting the shadow. In other
words lightening the shadow, which is reflected light.
And then
those are the components of the shadow. Now let's move into the
light.
Let's start with the obvious.
The brightest parts, and we have the shadow, now we look in the
light itself. Now the brightest part. Well, there's two
brightest part. There's well, there's a bright bright bright
part, and there's the kind of bright part. So this is the -
this fairly bright part here, which is close to the light
and this is the part of the sphere that receives the
most light. Notice how this is a lot brighter than over here,
this section as it gets close to the shadow, and that's known
as light. Simply known as light.
And this little part here, that's really really bright, the
part that I said which is the paper, that's known as
highlight.
Now the last part of the shadow -
or excuse me the light - is what's known as half tone. And I
like to think in this area right here I like to think of
half tone as halfway between light and shadow. So you notice
shadow's very dark, light's very bright, but there's this zone,
right? It's kind of this zone in between, it's not quite - it's
too bright to be shadow. It's too dark to be light. So this
is simply known as half tone.
It's sometimes called mid-tone because right in the middle.
Right? If I were to draw a diagram here of the value, so
that's the light,
that's the shadow right here.
That's the value right here. That's the value of light right here.
So the half tone would be like, you know,
somewhere in between, see that? Half tone. Half tone, AKA mid-tone.

Okay, now we know the components of light and shadow.
All the different elements, what they are, how we can refer back to them.
Now, obviously, if you look at this, it’s pretty complex.
Let’s simplify this a little bit.
Let’s make it a little bit more manageable.
All this stuff is like, ahh, you know, lots of different values, halftones—one basic
way you can think about it is to group light and shadow into two separate
families or two separate parts.
Obviously, the simplest way to do that is keep them grouped together
as either light or shadow.
I know we draw a couple of different forms here so you can help demonstrate this better.
I’m going to start really simple, only using two groups, basically light and shadow.
I’m going to leave the white of the paper.
It has a light side and we’re going to use the tone as the shadow side.
There is my sphere.
There is my cylinder.
Here is my cube or box.
What’s cool about this is that here you can see my line drawing.
You can see I’ve kind of drawn through.
We like to do that.
We like to think in 3-D. Draw through, always.
What’s cool about this idea is that you can even break it down or
draw it as a graphic shape.
Then you almost begin the three-dimensional, get almost a three-dimensional feeling.
Right?
Do you see that?
Your mind will fill in that sphere.
See that?
When you that shape.
That’s really just using the two values, the light and shadow.
Same with this sphere—excuse me, this box.
This one needs a little bit more information,
but you can kind of see if you were to do this, let’s say—
now you’re starting to get a three-dimensional read almost because
your mind will fill in right where I drew it here.
This one I drew it, but this one you can start to feel it.
That’s a cool part.
Think of it this way.
This is a simple grouping.
Light and shadow.
Light and shadow.
Light and shadow.
No mistake.
No differences between each one.
They don’t really come together.
That’s the key to getting this nice strong readability or recognition.
You always want to have the lights really light.
In this case, we kept it pure light and the darks really dark.
You don’t ever want to go—you don’t ever want to make your shadow too light and
your lights to dark.
Otherwise, you’ll lose that illusion.
That’s the key.
The first way to think about it is basically in really only two values.
Something light, something dark.
In other words, something light, the light side of the form and the shadow side of the
form, using only two values in this case.
Now, the third way, or the second way is that we can begin to add halftone or midtone.
Midtone can take a couple of different forms so let’s talk about that.
We’ll also explore value in greater detail.
There are also many, many great lessons.
Like I said, I learned a lot of this from Steve Huston.
You can find his lessons as well.
Review them.
So, now remember, the first idea is something light, something dark.
The light family and the shadow family.
We don’t ever cross them.
We don’t ever mix them up.
Keep them nice and dark so we get our nice recognition or readability, graphic read.
Strong contrast is another way to think about it, beautiful contrast.
To me, halftone is remember we said it’s halfway between shadow and light.
That’s one way we can think about it.
We can use halftone to lead the viewer into the light to make our drawing come into the
light, our form come into the light.
You see how it starts to go from flat.
It goes whooo; it starts to curve.
See that?
See here, this is flat.
It’s almost like a box, right?
The front face of the box, the front side of the box goes right into light.
We add the halftone, start to turn the form.
Now it becomes a more rounded form.
Do you see that?
That’s one way to think of halftone.
Here, the box form.
Let’s say the light is here.
We can show the face that’s not quite in light.
The light is from above.
The top surface of this box is not quite the shadow side that’s completely in shadow
being blocked, that’s blocking the light, but somewhere in between.
That’s the key to halftone.
It’s really—remember, it’s somewhere in between light and shadow.
That’s one way to think of halftone or one way we can use halftone to help transition
or turn the form or move from shadow to light, again, using value to create this beautiful
three-dimensional form.
Do you see how it’s all coming together?
When you can take your beautiful form drawing, combine it with value, then it’s powerful.
Another way to think of the halftone—you can almost think of it as adding a layer of depth.
We’ll cover this too in other lessons.
I want to touch on it briefly here.
If you want to show a layer of depth what you could do is simply go back to our two-value
idea or two families, light and shadow.
Even though we added halftone they’re still clearly separate.
One is still clearly dark, and the other one is still clearly brighter than the other.
Then we can even add our halftone here to soften that egg form that I got here, the
little ball.
Then we can even add halftone.
In this case, we’re making a little picture, a little thumbnail, a little composition.
Do you see that?
What that does is that separates this shape or that part of my little thumbnail from the
surface, which is in light.
That’s another way you can use halftone in the pictorial sense.
Again, we’ll go into this greater detail and also you can see many more lessons on
using values and pictures in the library as well.
The last way that I like to think about halftone is in terms of reflected light.
Let me bring in our sphere one more time and the surface here.
Shine the light.
I always start this way.
Really, it’s a cool way to start.
I think of a light side or a light family, a light group, the form in light and the shadow.
I kind of draw in the core shadow, which is the border.
Sometimes I start this way, making it hard.
You saw how we made the halftone.
Adding the halftone made is softer.
That’s kind of what I did here, using halftone to make it softer.
Another way we can think of—let me add some halftone back here just so you can see this
diagram a little bit better.
You can see the light side a little bit better.
Come off the paper a little bit.
We could think of the halftone as the shadow itself.
Remember, halftone isn’t just, let’s say on a scale of one to ten,
this is zero and this is 10.
It’s not necessarily 50.
The shadow doesn’t necessarily have to be, in this case, a number eight.
On a one to 10 pure black is 10.
This is like a number eight or a seven.
It doesn’t have to be that dark.
It could be a much lighter value in terms of the full range of values you can get, but
relative to your picture or your idea or your sketch or your drawing or your thumbnail,
it’s shadow.
So, this is my shadow value.
It’s not as dark as what we place here, but relative to this image, to this little sketch.
This is shadow.
Then what we could do—I’ll draw my little diagram here.
So far, I have light and shadow.
Now we can take this guy, put it back into her picture.
To me, the best place to put it in our picture is at the core shadow,
and I’ll show you why in a minute.
Remember, a lot of this shadow will receive bounced light.
Light source will come and reflect back into the object.
Light from the environment, the world will come back and lighten the shadow.
Instead of doing this—you know, we don’t want to do that.
We don’t ever want to erase the shadow.
That’s typically not a good idea especially if you’re brand new to these concepts.
That’s a dangerous trap.
Remember, we never want the shadow to be as light as the light family because then they
won’t be different.
They won’t be different.
They’ll be the same.
We’ll talk more about that as well.
I propose that a better strategy would be to take our darker value and simply apply
it to the core shadow.
Do you see that?
What that does—I don’t know if you can see it—do you see what’s happening here?
What that does is creating the illusion—do you see that—of bounced light.
Do you see that?
We went from an ordinary idea, kind of flat to adding more dramatic light, more dramatic
bounded light.
We can even take this and add it back into the occlusion.
Remember, the occlusion is also known as the contact shadow.
That’s part of the shadow.
Really, it’s the darkest part of the shadow where the ball touches or two objects touch,
make contact.
It’s dark because obviously bounced light can’t get in there.
It can’t penetrate.
That’s why it’s so dark.
So, you see how we have two ways to apply a simple three-value idea, something light,
something dark.
The light family, the dark family, and something in-between.
It’s a third neighbor or a cousin if there are two families.
We can apply it three different ways.
In this case, we use the light or the halftone family in a pictorial way to create a background,
a sense of depth.
In this case, we reserved the dark side.
Basically, we added a dark to the shadow family, and we’re able to create the effect of bounced
light, simply by correctly or intelligently placing a dark into our scene, into our drawing here.
That’s components of light and shadow, the anatomy of light and shadow.
Simple ways you can use it and apply it and get a lot of mileage out of it, simply two
values, three values and ways you can use it.
Now, let’s define specifically what the laws of light are and how they work
and how we can use them.

Okay, so let’s touch on the laws of light.
Now, this topic has been covered in greater detail by the man who taught it to me, Steve Huston.
You’ll definitely want to review that.
It’s going to be in the library.
I’m just going to briefly touch on them here because I think they’re super-super important.
There are only two laws of light.
That’s the good news.
The first is different value equals different plane.
Remember, the plane is a flattening of a curved surface.
And number two is everything that receives light is also a source of light.
Everything that receives light is also a source of light.
Different value, different plane.
So, what does that mean?
So, remember, that we like to simplify our values.
That’s really the cool thing about laws of light.
It helps you simplify a complexity of light.
Light is extremely complex.
Value is extremely complex.
This is a great way we can begin.
Remember, we like to simplify things into two values like shadow.
Now, in terms of form, when we add a value, let’s say we’re drawing a simple box idea
or like a curved piece of paper, a bent piece of paper.
When we add a value to something, we’re basically saying that this plane or this surface
is curved away from the light.
That’s one thing, too, that you want to keep in mind.
You always want to be aware of where your light source is.
Then we add one more value.
Let’s say this is a—let’s say it’s a box here.
We basically told our viewer that we had two planes, at least two planes here.
Light facing plane and then, boom, it turns at a corner into the shadow planes.
Flattening the form.
We’re going from light.
Turn the corner into shadow.
Whenever we add another value to our drawing we’re basically telling the viewer that,
hey, there is a corner here.
Remember, the corner is also known as the core shadow or the border.
The corner is the border.
That’s one way you can think about it.
Now, in terms of three values, something light, something dark, and something in between,
or light and shadow halftone.
Again, different value equals different plane.
We have a form.
Light facing plane.
We have the halftone plane, shadow plane.
Do you see that?
Light facing plane.
Halftone plane.
Light facing plane and halftone plane.
Shadow plane.
Notice three distinct values communicate three distinct forms.
It doesn’t just have to work in this instance.
I’ll just show you another quick example.
One of my favorite examples is the cube.
We’ve drawn the cube a few times.
One or two times, right guys?
Remember?
We’ve gone over this a lot.
Let’s say the light source is here, slightly up and to the left.
Now we know this side will be in shadow
including the cast shadow.
Now this, this top plane is light but this side plane isn’t quite light, isn’t quite shadow.
Once we add a tone it makes it halfway between the shadow plane and the light plane, we communicate
that it’s a different plane.
Different value equals different plane.
Different value equals different plane.
Different value equals different plane.
Do you see that?
The natural conclusion to this idea is that remember that planes are theoretical flattening
of two-dimensional or a curved form, a curved surface.
Different value, different plane.
So, as you can see, value and differences in value can help us communicate form.
This simple little idea can help us communicate a cylindrical curved form in this case, you see?
This little simple idea of three value—light, dark, and halftone—can help us communicate
a box in light.
This little basic idea of light and dark can help us communicate a box with a sharp corner,
a sharp turn, sharp turn.
This helps us communicate basically a curved surface that has a curve or softer,
more subtle turn. Do you see that?
Different value equals different plane.
You can see how it can evolve.
As long as we understand that when we draw—when we draw, every time we introduce a value we
are subconsciously telling our audience, telling our viewer, telling the people we want to
look at our drawings that we have created another plane.
We have created another plane.
We have created another plane.
Do you see that?
We have created another plane.
Do you see that?
Halftone, plane of space.
Light, the form, and light.
Dark, the form turning away.
Plane change.
Corner, core shadow.
Corner, plane, new plane, different shadow, different value, different plane, different value.
Different plane.
Got it?
You with me?
Are you with me?
You feeling me?
Do you see that?
Different value, different plane.
Different value, different plane.
We can take it as smooth as a cylinder.
We can take it as faceted as a diamond.
Smooth as a cylinder.
Faceted like a diamond.
Remember, every time you introduce a value you’re really introducing a plane.
That’s the key to keep in mind.
That’s the power of the laws of light.
We can get here by starting here.
Do you understand?
Once we start here, get this to work, we can slowly add facets to a diamond by adding different
values to create the curve, realistic form or illusion that we so desperately want.
Alright.
Laws of light, number two.
Everything that receives light is also a source of light.
What that means, one way we can explain it is going back to our object here on the surface.
Now, remember, different parts of the shadow, and let’s say this is our…our little form
in light, our little sphere in light.
Remember how we talked about how the shadow body itself will receive reflected light.
One of the ways that this diagram, our little drawing is getting that reflected light.
It’s from the surface itself.
What I mean by that—let me lighten this up a little bit here.
Can you see better?
The surface—remember, I mentioned that we have the light source.
Not only is light from the environment coming in, possibly other light sources.
Also, light is smacking, hitting this, making contact with the surface, and the surface
is bouncing it back.
Bouncing it back, which pollutes the shadow.
Remember how the shadow body becomes lighter but yet the contact stays nice and dark.
The contact receives no light.
Therefore, it’s not a source of light.
Everything that receives light is also a source of light.
Everything that receives light including the surface that our subject is on is a source of light.
Now, it’s not as strong as a direct light.
It’s much more diffuse, let’s say on a scale of one to ten.
The big bright spotlight over here is a one.
It’s the white of the paper.
The bounce light is, maybe it’s like a one.
So, we have this light coming in; therefore, there is light being reflected.
The surface itself is a source of light.
It’s not as strong as a direct light, but it is a source of light.

Now we’re going to do something really, really exciting.
We’re going to take our simple 3-D drawings and add light and shadow.
This is going to make our drawings come off the paper.
Let’s get started.
Let’s start by looking at this mug here.
Beautiful job.
He’s got the axis here.
We’ve got the cross-contour showing the form.
Let’s look at the direction the light is coming from.
Maybe we’ll go ahead and just indicate that.
It looks like it’s coming from the upper left.
Some things we want to observe are, let’s see, obviously the direction.
We want to check and see what that edge looks like.
The way we know how sharp or how soft to make an edge is the degree to which the form is
literally turning.
For something that’s going to turn sharply we’ll find the edges, it’s really definite
and a little bit sharper.
And when it’s gradual, we’ll find it’s got kind of that gradient,
kind of that smooth transition.
A little bit longer and softer area.
If we look at the mug we see that just right around that halfway mark, maybe a little in
front, we start to see that transition from where the light is hitting strongly to where
this is facing away from the light source.
When we want to describe a form that’s turning slowly like that, a round form, a cylindrical
form, we want to make it a soft transition.
It’s more almost of a zone than it is a specific line.
I’m just kind of flipping back and forth between a little softer graphite and a little
harder graphite.
Alright, make it nice and soft as it wraps around.
We might want to emphasize the core shadow and just beef it up a little bit.
The darkest place on the shadow of a form is where that light starts to dissipate and
it starts to transition away.
We’ll find that the surface facing away from the light might get a little bounced
light or reflected light back in.
If we darken this, it’ll show that effect of a core and then a little bit of reflected
light coming in from the backside.
Get that nice and smooth.
Do you see that kind of a gradient here?
We might also want to look inside this lid here.
Just get a little of that.
We start to see that the light is not reaching the inside of the lip here, and it’s falling
in on this side here.
This is a really soft transition, it looks like to me.
We’ll get that finger in there and kind of smooth it out, that gray.
Something else we want to look at is the shadow that it’s casting.
The form shadow is falling on the object.
The cast shadow is what is falling behind it.
It’s blocking it out like a shadow puppet.
This is the shadow.
It’s leaving on the ground.
We see the direction as headed off this way.
Again, let’s make some notes about what you observe on the edges here.
It looks like it’s pretty sharp at first.
Right here, closest to the object.
This edge is pretty sharp and pretty well defined.
If you look behind it, especially off the other side here, that edge looks a lot softer to me.
It might have to do more with that bounced light, that reflected light coming in.
What we’ll want to make sure and do is to start with the harder edge here, and then
start to soften it as it goes away, away from the object and then towards the back.
Make it a little duller pencil for that.
Alright, so let’s keep this edge soft.
As we get out further away, more of that light is going to balancing in from other sources, too.
It starts harder and gets softer.
We’ve noted some differences between a shadow that’s falling on a form showing it bending
away from us, and a shadow created by the form blocking the light source from reaching
behind it.
We’ve also noted to look for the edges, which can vary depending on the degree of
turnaround the radius here, which in this case is a gradual cylinder.
And then we’ve noted with the cast shadow how the edge can be softer the further you
get away from the object, but really tight and defined right at the source.
Let’s look at the hammer and how the light hits it and falls off of it into shadow.
The hammer has some interesting differences where the top part of the shaft here is actually
more squared off, coming across and down at a sharp turn.
Whereas the grip part of the handle has a little more of a gradual treatment, and we
see that here in Chris’ cross-contour.
The head also has some interesting variety.
While some edges are sharp, there is a little more gradual turn of the form of this cylinder here.
Although, because that material is so metallic that highlight actually reads as pretty defined
whereas the mug was a little more matte, and that edge turned a little more softly.
If we’re going to add the shadow to the hammer, we might note that the edge of where
this turns is fairly clean and fairly sharp.
As we get to the grip, we might want to soften it to show a more gradual turn.
Let’s go ahead and check it out.
It’s also got some interesting kind of dips and dives.
If you’re looking at the reference, we’ll try to stay true to that.
It kind of flares a little and pinches.
Let’s follow right along here.
Coming up.
We’ll kind of mimic this shape here.
It starts to get probably a little sharper as it reaches this end, which is much more
geometric than this cylindrical end.
It may be a little sharper and maybe a little softer.
Now, this is shadow falling on the form, and so it will have a core.
We might want to darken that a little bit there.
Then we’ll let it fall into that shadow side here.
Now, it doesn’t look like too much light is hitting this end.
Let’s go ahead and get that in.
It looks like it’s a fairly defined, maybe not super hard or super soft, but maybe it’s
kind of firmer edge here.
Maybe something like that.
Kind of think of edges on a sliding scale.
Hard to soft, sometimes lost completely.
Maybe this is hard.
Maybe this is softer.
Maybe it’s a little on the firmer side here.
If we look down the shaft to the more geometric plane, it actually looks like it’s pretty
firm as well.
Maybe we even leave the line that Chris has here and see if that reads.
As we get to the head, it looks like there is a little bit of a highlight hitting on
this blade here.
We’ll go ahead and note that this is in shadow.
But maybe we’ll leave a little bit for that fund highlight.
This is actually lit, but because we see it as a darker value, it actually sort of blends
into that same color.
Since we are looking specifically at light and shadow, we may want to leave it light
because the light is hitting it.
Since I really want to show off the plane here where the reflected light is bouncing,
let’s go ahead and just add a value to it knowing that it’s probably lit.
But, because of the way the light is hitting, we’re seeing that local color, and it’s
looking a little dark.
This area we see is also in shadow.
Alright, now there is a plane that’s running through here.
Let’s see.
Maybe we’ll follow Chris’ line.
Then we’ll see a plane change happening right about there.
This side is falling into that darker value.
The edge here is pretty well defined.
It’s turning fairly abruptly.
This edge is a little softer on the cylinder, but again, with the metallic color it’s
showing pretty strongly.
We just want to maybe soften it a little bit.
You guys may notice that there is a significant increase in complexity, comparing this household
object to this household object.
You might find there is more than one way to do it.
That’s part of the fun.
It’s a really good puzzle to give yourself, you know, to set something down.
You’ll start to realize that it’s not just light and shadow, but different textures—metallics
versus mattes.
All kinds of things can affect light and dark.
It’s really hard to find a vacuum where you can study just light and shadow without
also dealing with the materials of a particular object.
Some things are shiny and reflective.
Some things are absorbent.
Some things are painted yellow and green.
Some things have a dark finish.
There is a difference between shadow and dark.
All things that are dark aren’t necessarily shadow.
For now, just picking up these objects and practicing and keeping those questions in
your head is great.
It’s a great start.
A lot of those questions that are more complicated will be answered the further you get into
your lessons.
Let’s finish this guy off with the head here.
This is a pretty firm or sharp edge where it’s going to turn.
I’m just going to drop that into shadow.
Great.
And then it’s casting a shadow, right.
We’ve described the form, but let’s look at the shadow it’s casting.
It might be a little sharper toward the origin.
Then we see it maybe get a little softer as it moves away, keeping in mind the direction.
I’m trying to keep that graphite soft.
There is a pretty soft edge following along here.
It kind of tracks that contour that Chris has laid in for us.
This maybe gets a little bit sharper.
I see this gets a little bit softer here.
As you’re doing this, just think about why.
When you look for these things, see if you can understand what’s causing that.
If there is a sharp edge, if there is a soft edge, take some notes.
As we get further away we see that lighten up.
Alright, so that was a good, fairly complex one that’s going to get you thinking.
You can even look at this grip and think, well, the local color is that it’s dark.
It’s a dark grip.
It’s dark with light hitting it.
You get to make a call.
Do you want to push it into light or push it into dark?
Again, dark doesn’t mean the same thing as shadow.
Alright, more on that later.
Let’s look at one more household object, the paint tube.
Looking at our reference we see there is a nice turn where the corner here goes from
light to shadow.
It’s really interesting because it starts flat and ends cylindrical.
This will be a fun opportunity.
Looking at the light, it looks like the light is again coming from the similar direction.
What do we notice as we look at the form shadow to start?
To me it’s hardest edged here at this crease where it’s sort of hitting that flat plane.
As we come down, we’re transitioning from flat to cylinder, and it’s obvious to us
because Chris has this nice flat edge here, the sharp corners showing that.
Then he’s got these curves going around.
These cross-contours are showing that this form is cylindrical.
With that read in mind, let’s look at where this edge starts.
If we want to take it from the corner.
Maybe I’ll use my sharper pencil.
Yeah, that’s nice.
It comes in at an angle here, kind of starts to change direction coming down this way towards
the center.
Then here it really starts to get softer, I think.
Let’s see if we can indicate that.
Maybe hardest here.
A little firmer.
I’m going to switch to a baseball bat, the one that’s really dull, and just see if
we can’t describe that with a broader edge, broader and softer.
Maybe we’ll get it a little darker to show that this is the core.
A little softer here.
Let’s see, place some even tone if we can.
Get a little careful toward the bottom edge here.
That looks really gradual there to me.
Take a finger to it.
Again, there is a difference between things that are locally dark and shadow.
This cap happens to be dark in color.
So, while light may or may not be hitting it, it’s a darker local value.
We’re going to talk about this more later.
For now, I’m going to stay true to the reference and go ahead and hit it with the dark.
The shadow that’s being cast, we notice in the reference it’s obstructed, but let’s
use a clue so we can figure out how it would look.
I found one.
There is a cylinder.
Let’s imagine that to a smaller degree that this shape is pretty much this shape.
It’s just a smaller scale.
We wanted it a little sharper here.
Let’s just try that.
Let’s try using a secondary reference.
Alright, so we’re using that secondary reference to guess how this might look if we could see
the whole image.
You can kind of see the back of it.
It doesn’t go all the way up this edge here.
It kind of hits about there.
We would say it’s probably sharpest towards the source, and then it probably gets lighter.
Excuse me, I don’t mean lighter.
It’s probably sharpest towards the source and gets softer at its extreme edge, which
is furthest from the object, and that’s because at this point other light sources
are going to bounce back into it.
There is probably an even bigger shadow that would be cast by the whole tube.
Maybe we want to just go ahead and invent something along that same direction.
Because it’s going to start off wider and taper to something thin if we looked at it
from the side, I’m just going to kind of wing it.
Get thinner.
Thin and soft.
Or we can do totally another object there like it is in the still life and never have
to deal with it.
That’s not a terrible guess.
I think this could have potentially more volume to it.
We could play with that.
I might just take a little off to show...

Okay, welcome to this lesson.
We’re going to study rendering techniques.
Several different mediums, monochrome.
We’re also going to put an emphasis on textures, surface textures.
Not form in and of themselves, but when they’re used in conjunction with other rendering techniques
you can get a very effective treatment, let’s say, of a rocky foreground or of a house made
of old wood, wood that’s old now or a shingled roof, or any number or surfaces.
We’re going to work with graphite, wax pencil, charcoal pencil, ganache in the form of a wash.
Then we’re going to also use—in addition to learning how to put down a flat tone with
direction, we’re going to do cross-hatching.
Then we’ll do some different approaches to laying down a tone which can be used in
a textural manner or just in terms of building up your values.
I’m going to work on top of a sheet of Bristol plate, which is a thick, board-like paper.
It’s pretty close to white and it’s got a little bit of a tooth but not too much.
I’ve created a group of rectangles so you can contrast and compare the different approaches
and put them on one sheet.
At the end of that, I’m going to show some work by a variety of artists including some
of my own that illustrates the different kinds of mediums and applications that I will have
just demonstrated to you.
I’ll go into the illustrations a little bit more too.
A little bit of background, sometimes, but it should put everything together for you.
Then, as you move on into drawing effectively with three-dimensional form, you can also
use these textures for the edges in your drawing, or you can use them, as I said, for some of
the areas like the side of a rocky cliff that demand a good textural treatment.
So, with that, I’ll go ahead and get started.
Alright, so we’re going to go over ways to apply an even tone out of one value or
a gradated value.
I’ll use wax pencil to start, and I’ll also go over charcoal and a pen and ink wash
and graphite pencil.
For starters, let’s go ahead with this wax pencil.
We’re going to start here just by—
I don’t care if you overlap your stroke beyond the rectangle.
That’s not important.
The rectangle is just a device to contain things.
Notice I’m going parallel strokes like this.
Now, let me show you something interesting.
The pencil comes to a point after I’ve sharpened it.
Now I’ll create what we call a chisel point.
Watch.
I’ll take the tip of the pencil and angle it.
It’s about 30 degrees.
If we look closely at that pencil, you’ll see it has a fine tip, a flat facet at an angle.
It has a heel where the angle meets the cone of the lead.
Watch what I do to that pencil here.
This is where I use the flat facet.
I can create something that sweeps up or something that’s blocky like this.
If I turn the pencil 180 degrees I find the tip, and that gives me a fine line where I want it.
By doing that, I blunted the tip.
To sharpen it again I merely press down on the flat facet leaning toward the tip.
The heel of the pencil beneath the flat facet, but on the same side, allows me to push down
on the bottom of the shape and keep the top of the shape relatively soft.
That’s important where I have an overlapping form because it leaves a hard edge at the base.
Hard edges imply overlaps.
Now I’ve done that.
Let me go ahead and use the flat facet as I described to paint a tone like this.
I’m going to gradate that tone like this.
It just means I put less pressure on it.
I can also go back and darken it so that I get a gradation that is even stronger.
Let me take a graphite pencil.
This is what most people call a lead pencil.
This is made my General.
Actually, this is Barrel manufacturer, Barrel turquoise 4B.
The 6B is their softest and darkest, so 4B is in that neighborhood.
The 8H or 9H is the hardest and you can’t really use it effectively on top of Bristol
plate, which is what I have here.
Right in the middle is an F or an H or an HB.
Then you go softer to a 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6B.
Same basic idea, but you’ll notice the line stands out.
It’s a little more obvious.
You still go over your stroke like that.
I usually gradate just by using less pressure on the pencil.
You can also switch over from a 4B pencil to a 2B graphite pencil.
That’s harder and, therefore, lighter.
In the meantime, I’ll put down a really dark, even tone using the 4B pencil and just
pushing harder.
I’ll find that pencil in a moment, but in the meantime,
let’s do something we’ll call cross-hatching.
With a 2B pencil, if you push correspondingly the same you’ll see that the pencil itself
is harder, and it yields a lighter value.
That’s one way you can do it.
Or, like I said, you can just harder or lighter, rather, on your 4B lead, and you can still
get the same nice, even gradient.
One of the differences is, this will give you less graininess.
That is to say the 2B will.
You can go all the way down to an HB, or not so far down and just use a B. In every case
it’ll give you less grain.
But, some of them after you go down to like a B, after that it is very hard to put down
as black or a really dark gray.
I like graphite.
Graphite is fantastic for detail.
Let’s switch over to a ballpoint pen.
Here, everything we do, any tonality, any values or planes, they have to be expressed in line.
It doesn’t matter what direction.
Let’s go this way.
Here we actually still see, for the most part, our linear strokes.
Don’t push hard.
Just kind of separate them ever farther.
I’m going with diagonal strokes.
I use parallel strokes, that is parallel to the top of our frame
or to the side for specific purposes.
Let’s call it cross-hatching.
I can cross-hatch against if I like, or let’s do this.
Let’s go parallel to the side of the frame.
Now, if I put strokes that run diagonally like this, they don’t have to be 45 degrees
or exactly one or the other.
We’ll see here we’re darkening that field of line value.
If I do this, let’s put in our verticals again.
Then I cross my strokes at right angles, so parallel to the top and bottom like this.
This kind of cross-hatching removes all direction from the strokes.
It neutralizes the verticals and gives you something that’s perfectly static.
Most people think of this as cross-hatching.
It is, but it’s not the sum and substance of cross-hatching.
This is really good for putting in backgrounds
behind something more vibrant and moving like that.
It doesn’t really have direction.
A background then just sits back in its place.
It doesn’t advance.
It doesn’t move.
It’s static.
We can do this cross-hatching with a pencil, with a charcoal or with a wax pencil.
The charcoal pencil here, I can use a 2B or a 4B.
Let me start with a 2B.
Bristol plate has a little more grain to it than smooth newsprint, but it also has the
advantage of being very close to white,
so we can get a full range from black to nearly white.
It’s not different from the wax pencil or the graphite pencil.
It’s just a different medium, charcoal.
Now, charcoal is compatible with Conté.
Conté is a mixture.
It’s a hybrid.
It’s part wax pencil and part charcoal mingled together to form a Conté lead.
When you want to go over it, you can use a wax pencil here
or you can use the charcoal pencil.
Now, if you try to go over a wax pencil with charcoal they’ll resist each other.
It won’t work.
If you try to go over the opposite, if you try to go over charcoal with a wax pencil,
it’ll resist.
But, if you use Conté as your intermediary, you’ll be fine.
Oftentimes, I’ll use charcoal to refine the grainier Conté.
I’m going to do something else to this one, which is smudge it.
You know, they make paper stumps rolled very tightly and coming to a conical kind of a
point at either end.
With such a tool, all you have to do to get gradations or to even out your tone is to
go back over that with a Kleenex or a stump, as they call it, and smear it.
That will give you the most even of tones.
Really, if you know what you’re doing, that can be very useful.
If you’re just starting out, be careful.
You might use it as a crutch because you like the even feeling of it.
At the same time, it can get a little wishy-washy if you do it too much.
In lieu of a stump, you can just take a Kleenex tissue and rub it.
Be conscious of your gradation.
You don’t to lose the shape that you originally created.
Let’s put down some more charcoal.
You can do this with what’s known as vine charcoal, a charcoal that I use sometimes
when I’m laying in a drawing or a painting.
Vine charcoal has no wood surrounding it.
It’s very fragile, and if you lay it down on any surface, all you can do—you merely
have to blow on it, and it will erase itself.
But, if you have that you can use it with a Kleenex or a stump.
It’s really no different than from what I just demonstrated using a charcoal pencil.
Here is a pastel stick.
They come in round and square shapes.
They’re quite grainy on a surface like this.
They’re very good on what we call Canson paper.
That’s a product and they sell all kinds of colors too.
I’m doing everything in monochrome now, but this goes much darker,
and it’s faster to do that.
Just the residual that’s on the Kleenex can be used to finish out that gradation.
You can use any of these in conjunction with a pen and ink wash.
Or, you can use gouache.
Just black.
It effectively gives us the same effect as a pen and ink wash, and that’s what I’m
going to show now.
Notice with this, I can also use my eraser to draw.
The smudging has other purposes as well.
I’m just using gouache.
Gouache is also known as opaque watercolor.
It’s water soluble, water-based paint, except that unlike watercolors we can use it opaquely,
not just transparently.
Transparent color includes markers, watercolor.
Acrylics and oils can be used that way too, but usually are opaque.
Let me show you here what I’ve got.
I have several brushes.
This is what we call a flat.
In other words, from one side to the other, it’s cut straight across and right angles.
This is called a round brush because it’s round in cross-section.
It comes to a point.
This is what we call a filbert brush.
It’s like a flat, but the edges are beveled.
All of these are synthetic brushes.
When you become a fabulously successful painter, and you can afford to buy a sable.
Go ahead, be my guest.
But, right now these work just fine, and I’m not too interested in something like that.
Not too much.
That’s probably even too much.
That’s my gouache, black.
Then I’m going to use a tub of water.
Don’t buy this at the art store.
I can thin that out like this, or if I use less water then I can mix the two together
I can gradate.
I can always just add more water to the brush to do that.
Now, that’s applied just to the bare Bristol plate.
You can also—this is a favorite of watercolorists, of course.
You can do wet on wet like this where you wet the surface.
This is often used for skies, for instance.
Then you go back into it like that.
You’ll see how the paint bleeds out into that moist surface.
Let’s go ahead and do that on the first square in the second row.
It’s actually best to do this on a flat surface.
Otherwise, there can be a tendency for the paint to run.
We can get past that, I think.
Let’s put a little more water into the board and let that kind of bleed into it.
You’ll need a Kleenex so you can control the amount of paint and the consistency.
When is use oils, I have a bunch of cotton T-shirt rags that I use in lieu of Kleenex.
They’re very important, cheap tools because if you can’t control the amount of pigment
on your brush, well, it’s very difficult to have enough control to do a painting.
With ink it’s the same.
You just probably want to mix up the consistency of
your ink wash inside the water bowl itself.
We’re going to let that dry, and while we do, I’m going to show you another way of
getting a nice, flat tone on toned paper.
Alright, let’s do this then.
If we take the white pencil—this is wax pencil—and we push hard, we can gradate
this so that you still have dark tone coming down from left to right, but it consists of
the gray paper itself.
And now, if you want to make that an even more even gradient, you can use a wax pencil
product called Verithin.
The Verithin is harder and comes to a tighter point.
Watch as I do this how nicely and evenly I can gradate from a light into a dark.
The same goes for the earlier demonstration, where we can cut down on the graininess that
we see here by using a Verithin pencil at the edge.
On this gray surface, I’m just—good paper stock is Canson, and they make a product called
Mi-Teintes. It's French.
It’s spelled Mi-Teintes, which means tints.
Now, the nice thing about the gouache, or even better,
pen and ink wash, is that you can use it in
conjunction with other materials.
Here I’m using a black wax pencil and just going over it like so.
This allows me to get my darkest dark very quickly, and all of my gradations to any level
of subtlety that I like.
I’ll be showing an example of a great illustrator named Fortunino Matania.
He uses this combination of pen and ink and pencil—graphite pencil, I believe, in his
case to get wonderful effects.
He comes in too with some highlights that are light.
Okay, now let’s talk about a couple of specific textures.
Hair, for instance, sometimes—first of all, you can curve your strokes.
This is not curly hair of course, but for long sweeping hair or the main of a lion,
something like that.
That’s pretty effective.
You can also do this.
You can put down a tone using essentially just a squiggle.
You can gradate that too.
I can do this with wax pencil.
I could use graphite pencil.
It doesn’t matter.
I could even this out after the fact, or I could leave it if I like that texture.
So, first I showed you how to get even gradients and flat values.
But here we can also use this for texture.
I’ll give you a couple of other examples on that in a moment.
There are certain architectural surfaces or hair, other areas which actually do have a
similar texture.
It’s worth practicing some textures too.
Alright.
Okay, one thing we can do to create texture is to draw on top of texture.
I’m putting the sandpaper pad, the kind you’d use to sharpen a charcoal or a Conté
pencil, and I’m laying it underneath the tracing paper.
Let’s see what we get when we draw across the sandpaper pad.
Maybe not use that.
I’ll use charcoal.
We pick up a little bit of texture when we do this.
If you compare it to here where we have not texture at all.
By the way, all of these little demonstrations can be made quite different depending on the
paper you’re using.
Here we’re using a lightweight tracing paper.
Let’s have a look at what we can do.
If I pull it taut like this and just use the weight of the lead, a 30th of one value.
I’m not drawing on a cushion anymore.
I’m drawing on air.
Okay, good.
Otherwise, I’m usually drawing on a surface like this, with about 25 sheets of smooth newsprint.
If you’re drawing on a hard surface like a Masonite board, it has no give.
You can’t really get nuances of edges and value changes, but with this cushion of newsprint,
I’m able to get almost anything I want.
It’s not just the paper that you’re drawing on, but what paper is on top of too.
It’s never just, oh well, that’s charcoal.
Charcoal on what?
All of this is important.
As far as further textures are concerned, you can do stuff like this.
I’ll use graphite for this.
Let’s try to create an interesting texture
where it’s darker at the end of each stroke.
Or, it curves like a thatch roof on a house.
Working like this is sometimes called alla prima drawing, where you’re trying to get
the texture at the same time as the value and edge.
Alla prima means at the first, so it means right from the onset.
You’re not going to go back in and overwork it.
In French it’s called premier coup.
It’s the same when painting.
If you’re trying to do a painting, and you want to do it at the
first onset, the premier coup, that means on your palette you try to mix just the value
at just the right paint consistency and just the right color intensity and just the right
hue and lay it down with the proper place and with the right edge.
Center painters, Frans Hals was one of the first notable painters to go that route, although
he did not do just that.
Howard Sanden emphasizes that.
Richard Schmidt emphasizes that.
They both have excellent books on painting.
Sargent used a lot of that kind of approach.
He was a hybrid.
He also did layered painting.
Premier coup also applies here if we want to get the texture as we go.
A texture like this could be used for the side of a building, or it could be used for pavement.
More things than I can mention.
I’ll show examples by real master draftsman.
You can gradate this too.
In a moment, we’ll switch over to do that.
What I’ll do next is create almost a spatter kind of a look, which, by the way, you can
also do if you take your soft brush, dip it in your pink and ink wash or pen and gouache
wash, and then just pull back on the fibers, and it will spatter.
I’ll guess I’ll show you an example.
I’ve got a synthetic soft filbert brush, and we’ll spatter the texture.
If you want it to be nice and clean, you can just take some low adhesive tape and put it
around the edge of this rectangle, and that will confine the spatter shape.
This is good for marble texture or any number of other surfaces.
Then you can also bleed that in to like this, veins or areas where it evens out.
Then you can come back into those areas and darken one side and harden its surface and
get a sense of overlap.
One thing you can do is you can turn the whole sheet upside down 180 degrees and then spatter
it from both sides.
That will make for a more even effect.
Okay, before I go on to examples from key important artists,
I’m going to do one more thing for you.
Let’s take a common sponge and layer tracing paper on top of it.
What an interesting texture that is.
If you want to get a sense of concrete, take a sheet of particle board and turn it on its
side and then take a tracing paper and go on top of that.
That will give you a kind of stony surface.
Here then is another texture.
We just—I’ve done drawings where I wanted more texture so I took them outside, put them
against my apartment outside wall, and I just did the drawing on top of the stucco.
That’s really easy stuff to find ways of creating textures.
Again, don’t fall too much in love with texture for its own sake.
Texture has to follow form, not the other way around, unless you’re doing something
meant to be flat.
Good, okay.
Let’s take a little moment or two and go over some examples that I’ve pulled out
from important artists who’ve done really good work in monochrome, with everything from
pen and ink to pen and ink wash, graphite.

Here is a classic example of applying line to create tone.
In some instances like here, just a flat black tone.
Here you’ll notice how the line has been put down to not just create value, but to
create planes.
Here this is more vertical, and then we get to the back you’ll notice the strokes are
doing this on the side and this on the back or top.
He’s also gradating, you see here, from pretty dark to very, very light.
Charles Dana Gibson worked around the turn of the 20th century.
He was an American illustrator, and he’s known almost exclusively for this line work
and hatching.
Here, the direction of those strokes is very important to conveying the form.
Here, this is the background.
As I said just a little while ago, you want to keep that almost at right angles with cross-hatching,
see, and that keeps the background quite static and sits in the background.
It doesn’t come forward.
Also, value.
You’ll notice this is a white tablecloth, so the values for the shadows are very light.
Everything he draws, still life, this chandelier, these cups and saucers all done in planes.
Here is a classic, one of his most detailed illustrations.
It looks like a night at the opera.
You’ll see how the head in foreground is nicely defined by the angles of the cross-hatching.
Cast shadow there.
Look at the planes of her hair.
He’s looking for areas where planes come together called crest lights, so he leaves
those light.
He just suggests some of the pattern on her dress.
Here the planes of the hair are really greatly beautiful in of themselves.
So, we actually can look at any part of his drawing here and find that even by itself
it’s a little work of beauty.
There are stories being told here, as almost always with Charles Dana Gibson’s work.
Notice he uses the background as a foil to bring his figures in front of it or silhouette them.
We have some light on dark and some dark on light.
The actual work is a lot more refined.
This is a reasonable reproduction, but if you’ve seen the original, it’s really something.
Okay, again, see the strokes following the form.
There is a little crosshatching going on here, but it’s not at right angles, which is static.
There are still some angularity to it.
Okay, let’s look at another one.
Another beautiful composition.
He’s got this figure silhouetted against a dark background.
Look at the directions of the strokes.
That’s what I want you to concentrate on.
Also, some areas that are just dark so it’s not all evenly incredibly detailed.
The eye couldn’t process that.
Alright, this is a movie illustration, movie poster illustration for Hot Shots Part Deux.
Charlie Sheen is here along with Valeria Golina.
This is a hybrid because you see the stroke
are being used in a linear way and they vary in value.
This dark balances these darks here, but also the tone is being put down in a flat way too,
in their hair and in other areas like the simplification of the gun.
A very, very soft, light cloud background.
Here we have a head drawing demonstration I did some years ago.
I used Conté for defining the light and dark pattern.
Then I used wax pencil to create the lights so you’ll actually the movement of the half
tones crosses the form, but the Conté follows the form.
It has its darkest darks.
A couple of areas are left out where the reflected light occurs at the crest light, and at the
very end I used some Verithin, which is the finest of the wax pencil products.
For that I used very close values such as the creases on the forehead.
Probably, in looking at it all this time, I probably could have gone just flat and dark
for these shadows.
Here we have a costume drawing demonstration, and this is strictly using Conté, nothing else.
You’ll notice how some of the halftones are just literally line strokes together.
Then there are areas that are saturated really, really dark and flat.
Edges are harder where we get overlaps, softer where this heavy fabric turns from light to shadow.
This one I want to talk about.
We have two characters toward the top of the composition.
I left two areas completely light for possibly title treatments, and then I applied my value
in long strokes.
I’m not concerned that this be perfectly flat.
I actually like it more this way.
It gives some movement, some energy to it.
Then it fades off into a vignette here and here.
I see this gun is completely dark.
His hair is completely dark.
He’s the first read, and this other fellow—this is an espionage movie—back here, he’s
a second read, and because of the high contrast, the white next to the black, and then the
clear, hard shapes here, the first read in this particular picture are here and here.
The rest of it just supports that purpose.
This one is work on a black sheet of paper, so here I used white wax pencil.
I took an airbrush and lightly blew over the edges to give it some atmosphere.
The thinking is the same as if it were a dark on light.
It’s just we’re going from light to dark.
Our last example is a drawing I did for a film known as Frankenstein.
It might have had a subtitle.
I also worked on Kenneth Branagh and Robert Deniro’s Frankenstein a little bit latter.
I had a little spurt of Frankensteins and horror.
I also do a lot of film noir and crime stories, and this one is actually not a real movie,
but it could be.
It’s Charles Bronson and it gives us here the setting, which I just made up.
This is a demonstration for a class I once taught in movie poster design.
What I want to show here is I just drew the core.
I didn’t fill in the whole shadow.
I faded it off here and I faded everything to white here.
That works really well because they could drop a title treatment right in here.
Or they could do something down here like the billing.
They could put it a tag line running across the dark here of his hair.
It’s a technique, it’s actually an approach to lighting that I have used in genuine movie
poster designs, and you’ll see one or two coming up.
So, like the last design I showed you with Bronson, this is for the real film Terminator 2.
I did about 30 in a day for this.
I just basically did the drawings as you’ve seen my demonstrate several times and then
photocopied them onto gray paper in all cases.
What that did was it gave me—all 30 of them—all I had to do is come back in and refine the
edges a little bit with wax pencil and come back in with highlights using white pencil.
If I wanted to I had a little bit of white gouache, and I touched back into the rim light
here, for instance, or maybe the eyeball here.
I may have had some black gouache to really, really darken everything where I wanted it to be.
By doing this, it’s just a simple process.
I was able to get all 30 of them done in just a day.
This one is Ransom with Mel Gibson, and it’s real similar.
You’ve got one character here, and he’s viewing a television screen or a big monitor,
I’m not sure.
So, it depends on having nice, rich flat darks like these, and then at the same time I just
used an electric eraser, and I pulled it across the page to create these static lines, which
helps sell the idea that it’s a TV or a monitor.
Then coming back in with some white just to give it more form.
You’ll notice this is carried a little farther than the Arnold shots because I didn’t have
so many to do that day.
The edges are important.
If this were completely hard-edged, it would look plastic like what is that.
But, here instead I softened the edges a little.
Keeping this edge hard keeps our focus going right where we want it, which is the attitude
of Mel Gibson.
After all, this is a movie involving retribution and everything else that’s not a happy emotion.
We want to show attitude.
We don’t want to just go on autopilot.
Especially when you’re drawing heads.
This is important.
By the way, even still life.
The staging of the still life can convey emotion.
Remarkable, but true.
This is A Fish Called Wanda.
They already had a logo for the fish which they were going to repeat in other poster ideas.
So that was just basically plugged in.
Cut and paste.
Then we have John Gleese, Kevin Kline, Michael Palen, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
I didn’t have a very good photo of Jamie Lee Curtis, so I drew something more generic
of a very glamorous, pretty star.
You’ll notice the texture.
I went over a few textures just a little before this, and this is the scribble texture I showed.
That’s really how I built this one.
I kind of wanted to use it because everything is kind of a big mess, and they’re very
confused.
Not only did I have to pull off the emotions, but I had to obviously apply tone, so I used that.
Except here at the feathers, where I used almost like a ribbon where you could highlight
in the middle and it carries over.
Here we have what I think is an excellent Charles Dana Gibson illustration.
Notice the direction of the strokes on the underplane of her hat.
Notice the crest light defining her hair.
Look at the subtle light, cross-hatching that he uses to create the planes on the faces.
Here, this is really fantastic the way he creates that rounded head, leaves the crest
light to create like he’s very flushed, dark complexion.
Notice here he applies a textured stroke.
It has direction.
We talked about that just earlier.
Then on the color the direction runs contour to it obviously.
He’s got some flat blacks that he introduces, so it’s not just all line, and that would
look like a kaleidoscope.
We’d go crazy.
Instead, it’s just beautiful.
The negative shapes, he’s not unconscious of that either.
There is a lot to be said for this one.
Here is a crest light.
The fact that the hat is really dark, and the crest light is almost just the white of
the paper means that we know the hat has a satin finish, not a matte finish like we would
have here, where it evenly grades from the crest light into the darks.
That’s a very good device.
The hands give a lot of expression.
Notice her facial expression, but her hand expression is just equally curious.
This is called seeing New York, the Flat Iron, which was the first skyscraper as such in
New York City.
They’re pretty.
It’s a marvel to them.
I love that piece.
This along with all of Fortunino Matania’s work is awe inspiring.
What I want you to look at is how he’s combined pen and ink.
In our case, I demonstrated gouache.
This is a wash of ink or it could be gouache here too.
Then on to it he’s gone ahead and softened the edge of the thigh, making it round.
Look at the hair as it merges and blends into the sand almost.
Here we put detail in the shadows.
We burn out the lights completely.
It’s opposite of the usual format where we keep the blacks totally simple and then
describe the form and the light.
Look at a couple of other things here.
I want you to notice the direction of the strokes on these slabs.
Whereas the figure itself is much more curvilinear than angular.
Almost by itself it would be too curvilinear for my tastes, but he strikes a great contrast
between his female figure on the foreground and his rugged background.
Here he keeps the silhouette of her hip pretty hard and then softens it on the thigh so it
doesn’t look too cut out.
Here he’s got a perfectly even gradient.
You can see the strokes of the pencil on top of a very light wash, and in the foreground
this is very remarkable.
You’re never really going to find a picture of any extent where the foreground is equally
dark from top to bottom.
That’s true of verticals, like the wall or a side of a fence.
You’ll see how in spite of all the detail, overarching, he gradates that ground plane.
It’s no coincidence that his darkest darks are right here behind the figure.
Again, giving her the prominence, not just because she’s almost centered, but because
of the edges and the values.
The rocks here, notice again the angular, craggy kind of approach that he’s used.
He’s a master of value control.
Here on the top plane of this rock, very, very subtle close values.
It’s a masterpiece.
Gibson had kind of a wry sense of humor.
In this case maybe less so, but he has bathers.
You can tell the period piece by their bathing suits or otherwise.
Look at the direction though.
That’s what I like about this one.
The sweep, you see, of that wave, the shadow on the wave, or how it pulls up as it gathers
its strength and then is going to come slamming down.
The direction of the strokes in this one is really central.
Beyond that, you can see a few areas that the eye goes to immediately because they’re
the darkest.
It’s also subtle.
I mean, I love this figure, which is submerged beneath the water.
Notice he keeps it lighter.
And he sleeps it into the same flow of that wave.
Then look at the beauty, the design of this hair.
Imagine if that weren’t there.
If we took it out, it wouldn’t be nearly as nice.
In fact, it echoes this foam at the top of the wave, which is almost like the Japanese
17th century painter, printmaker, Hokusai, in some of his famous work involving waves.
Here is another Fortunino Matania, Tour de Force, which actually could get so repetitive
because almost all of his work is made up of Tour de Force.
Here, notice that the strokes—first of all, you’ll notice that he used an ink wash,
and it gradates from darker to lighter and darker again.
And then down here very dark, and then reflections in the water.
We see some debris.
Normal Rockwell wrote a chapter in the famous artists course called The Importance of Detail.
You have to take that with a measure of salt.
Some people will take that as a license to start their drawings with detail.
No, that’s not how he does it.
He does little thumbnail compositions before he actually does the finished drawing.
They will have four values.
Black, light gray, dark gray, and white.
That’s a nothing, really.
I just wanted to tell you that he doesn’t just start shooting from the hip and figuring
it out as he goes.
Although, in small details he certainly does.
Look at the direction of the waves again.
Just like Gibson’s last piece I showed you but more subtle.
The characterization of these victims.
This is from the Lusitania, which was sunk by World War II by the Germans, and it was
like a match that set off a powder keg and one of the big reasons the United States was
able to enter that war, even though Woodrow Wilson promised he never would.
Here we have another Fortunino Matania, and he has used once again washes and pencil to
create everything that’s on this page.
This is a nice simple black.
She, of course, is our center of attention.
After all, she is almost pure white.
Shadows on white garments never go as dark as shadows on darker garments like this.
You’ll notice that there is an interesting secondary activity going on here.
And, more to the point for our study, if you look at this figure in the middle distance,
and you follow his breast, his deltoid muscle, his biceps, and his forearm muscles, you’ll
notice that they’re cross-hatched.
They go like this.
Very lightly, but nonetheless in the direction of the form.
He’s come back in with paint, it would appear to create little crumbs on the table, probably
to do most of the lights on this white gown.
He’s got relief, that is to say simplicity, but even here if you look at the bricks they’re
just basically textural strokes of the type I showed you but kept very light but just
touched at the seams between the bricks.
The rest of it—we know that the brick runs all the way like this.
He doesn’t have to outline that for us.
He just prompts the viewer’s eye.
Beautiful black here.
Again, a gradation from darker to lighter on the ground plane and in the background.
Notice he keeps the background pretty static like I showed you guys with Charles Dana Gibson.
This is a pretty complex subject matter.
You see the wounded and the dying in the trenches in World War I.
Again, wonderfully done foreground.
It’s kind of dirty, just muddy, which is what happened in the trenches and in no-man’s
land between them.
These figures in the distance, notice they’re closer value.
They’re almost the value as the ground.
The same thing with this structure.
The farther back they go, the lighter they go.
The closer it is to the value of the sky itself.
Notice this is probably done with wet on wet wash which I demonstrated a little earlier.
The highest contrast is going to be in the foreground.
In this we have deep space.
It’s not like Normal Rockwell where everything is in one picture plane at the front.
Here we go all the way from front plane figures to middle plane figures all the way to the
third plane, which is the distance.
That’s usually the way a landscape is set up.
I mean, really, this pallet that they’re going to carry the wounded away on serves
as a nice background.
It’s a silhouette.
The second most important action behind this in the composition.
What an illustrator he was.
Here we have a pen and ink wash, pencil.
He may have even used dark paint.
In fact, I’m sure he did for the bottom of that cauldron or for these beams or for this spot.
It looks for sure that he used white gouache to come back here, wet on wet to create these
fumes from the poor people below who are having molten tar poured on them.
The foreground is pretty light.
Here we have Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, which is Syria and was part of one of the
eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.
She kind of rebelled and wanted to form her own independent kingdom
rather than be a dependent of Rome.
The Romans would have nothing of it, and they besieged her,
and so that’s a scene from that warfare.
This is a great scene from history, and she’s one of the strongest women that we encounter
in classical history.
Here is a classic what they call Gibson Girl.
They even made a movie called that.
She was so well known.
Just like Leyendecker had an arrow shirt collar man, we associate Leyendecker with a New Year’s
Baby, etc.
There was the Petty Girl by George Petty.
Gibson was famous for this.
Notice she has an aristocratic bearing, and that’s pretty much the kind of subject matter
that he worked with, with a few exceptions.
Notice the direction of the strokes here to create the hair texture.
Then a few thicker strokes where it gets dark and deep.
Notice the beautiful line that silhouettes this head.
We can see the head separating from the neck, which is of critical importance.
It’s very light.
Then he’s got his darks around the eye socket.
That’s obviously going to want to be one of your focal points.
Notice how the strokes twist over themselves here to create the hair mass in the bun at
the back of head.
Very simple, but these are some of the things he used to create it.
This is dated 1898 by Charles Dana Gibson.
It’s called “Mr. Pip Having Developed Unusual Symptoms: The Best Medical Advice is Secured."
He’s used a lot of devices artistically.
Forget medically.
Notice all this wonderful Baroque curvature to this seated lady’s gown as opposed to
the straights on the standing male figure.
In between we find the spiral folds on this gentleman’s jacket.
The legs are nice and dark, and they silhouette against a lighter plane here.
Notice, again, cross-hatching in the background runs parallel to the picture frame.
Quite different from the hatching that describes his head.
We’re all constantly drawing from Charles Dana Gibson.
They describe the planes of the head so beautifully.
All of my teacher’s students were encouraged to draw from Gibson.
If I didn’t mention it, there is a book.
It’s put out by Dover.
It’s called “The Gibson Girl and her America,” and so if you want to get something to draw
from, it’s a real cheapy, and really, really good.
Notice here he’s kind of softened the edges around this guy’s mutton chops and his hair.
It also makes his head glow if you really pull back and look at it, as opposed to the
sharp definition of this guy’s bald head.
This one is also from 1898.
It’s titled “One of the Hazards of Golf.”
It’s like a painting.
I really look at this as a painting.
Notice how he left an area out here so it wasn’t just a boring rectangle, and here
he puts his darkest drunks on the tree trunks even though they’re not in the front plane;
they’re in the middle plane.
These figures are united.
Look at the strokes.
He merges them together.
In fact, when you look at a couple in the distance, that’s the affect we get.
Notice that this bank on the ground curves upwards in the direction of the tree trunks,
and his strokes do just that, making us see that.
Almost like the waves in the ocean which we saw him use earlier.
Then where the plane of the path evens out, the strokes become more horizontal.
I hope you enjoyed that section of several different artists and how they use some of
these textures, and also how they create form by using cross-hatching, direction of the
strokes, even line.
We’ll notice, for instance, in one case I’ve gone over just a simple drawing of
a head by Charles Dana Gibson, and the silhouette is the most beautiful line.
We can use line in conjunction with tone.
However, we’ve created the tone.
That’s central to everything, line.
But, from it we can create tone as well.
So, I hope you kind of get the connection there.
We’ll definitely be using it in future lessons in this series.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you at a later lecture.